Project Gutenberg's A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready, by Bret Harte
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Title: A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready
Author: Bret Harte
Posting Date: October 28, 2008 [EBook #2280]
Release Date: August, 2000
Language: English
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MILLIONAIRE OF ROUGH-AND-READY ***
A MILLIONAIRE OF ROUGH-AND-READY
by
BRET HARTE
JTABLE 4 7 1
PROLOGUE
There was no mistake this time: he had struck gold at last!
It had lain there before him a moment ago--a misshapen piece of
brown-stained quartz, interspersed with dull yellow metal; yielding
enough to have allowed the points of his pick to penetrate its
honeycombed recesses, yet heavy enough to drop from the point of his
pick as he endeavored to lift it from the red earth.
He was seeing all this plainly, although he found himself, he knew not
why, at some distance from the scene of his discovery, his heart
foolishly beating, his breath impotently hurried. Yet he was walking
slowly and vaguely; conscious of stopping and staring at the landscape,
which no longer looked familiar to him. He was hoping for some
instinct or force of habit to recall him to himself; yet when he saw a
neighbor at work in an adjacent claim, he hesitated, and then turned
his back upon him. Yet only a moment before he had thought of running
to him, saying, "By Jingo! I've struck it," or "D--n it, old man, I've
got it"; but that moment had passed, and now it seemed to him that he
could scarce raise his voice, or, if he did, the ejaculation would
appear forced and artificial. Neither could he go over to him coolly
and tell his good fortune; and, partly from this strange shyness, and
partly with a hope that another survey of the treasure might restore
him to natural expression, he walked back to his tunnel.
Yes; it was there! No mere "pocket" or "deposit," but a part of the
actual vein he had been so long seeking. It was there, sure enough,
lying beside the pick and the debris of the "face" of the vein that he
had exposed sufficiently, after the first shock of discovery, to assure
himself of the fact and the permanence of his fortune. It was there,
and with it the refutation of his enemies' sneers, the corroboration of
his friends' belief, the practical demonstration of his own theories,
the reward of his patient labors. It was there, sure enough. But,
somehow, he not only failed to recall the first joy of discovery, but
was conscious of a vague sense of responsibility and unrest. It was,
no doubt, an enormous fortune to a man in his circumstances: perhaps it
meant a couple of hundred thousand dollars, or more, judging from the
value of the old Martin lead, which was not as rich as this, but it
required to be worked constantly and judiciously. It was with a
decided sense of uneasiness that he again sought the open sunlight of
the hillside. His neighbor was still visible on the adjacent claim;
but he had apparently stopped working, and was contemplatively smoking
a pipe under a large pine-tree. For an instant he envied him his
apparent contentment. He had a sudden fierce and inexplicable desire
to go over to him and exasperate his easy poverty by a revelation of
his own new-found treasure. But even that sensation quickly passed,
and left him staring blankly at the landscape again.
As soon as he had made his discovery known, and settled its value, he
would send for his wife and her children in the States. He would build
a fine house on the opposite hillside, if she would consent to it,
unless she preferred, for the children's sake, to live in San
Francisco. A sense of a loss of independence--of a change of
circumstances that left him no longer his own master--began to perplex
him, in the midst of his brightest projects. Certain other relations
with other members of his family, which had lapsed by absence and his
insignificance, must now be taken up anew. He must do something for
his sister Jane, for his brother William, for his wife's poor
connections. It would be unfair to him to say that he contemplated
those things with any other instinct than that of generosity; yet he
was conscious of being already perplexed and puzzled.
Meantime, however, the neighbor had apparently finished his pipe, and,
knocking the ashes out of it, rose suddenly, and ended any further
uncertainty of their meeting by walking over directly towards him. The
treasure-finder advanced a few steps on his side, and then stopped
irresolutely.
"Hollo, Slinn!" said the neighbor, confidently.
"Hollo, Masters," responded Slinn, faintly. From the sound of the two
voices a stranger might have mistaken their relative condition. "What
in thunder are you mooning about for? What's up?" Then, catching
sight of Slinn's pale and anxious face, he added abruptly, "Are you
sick?"
Slinn was on the point of telling him his good fortune, but stopped.
The unlucky question confirmed his consciousness of his physical and
mental disturbance, and he dreaded the ready ridicule of his companion.
He would tell him later; Masters need not know WHEN he had made the
strike. Besides, in his present vagueness, he shrank from the brusque,
practical questioning that would be sure to follow the revelation to a
man of Masters' temperament.
"I'm a little giddy here," he answered, putting his hand to his head,
"and I thought I'd knock off until I was better."
Masters examined him with two very critical gray eyes. "Tell ye what,
old man!--if you don't quit this dog-goned foolin' of yours in that
God-forsaken tunnel you'll get loony! Times you get so tangled up in
follerin' that blind lead o' yours you ain't sensible!"
Here was the opportunity to tell him all, and vindicate the justice of
his theories! But he shrank from it again; and now, adding to the
confusion, was a singular sense of dread at the mental labor of
explanation. He only smiled painfully, and began to move away. "Look
you!" said Masters, peremptorily, "ye want about three fingers of
straight whiskey to set you right, and you've got to take it with me.
D--n it, man, it may be the last drink we take together! Don't look so
skeered! I mean--I made up my mind about ten minutes ago to cut the
whole d--d thing, and light out for fresh diggings. I'm sick of
getting only grub wages out o' this bill. So that's what I mean by
saying it's the last drink you and me'll take together. You know my
ways: sayin' and doin' with me's the same thing."
It was true. Slinn had often envied Masters' promptness of decision
and resolution. But he only looked at the grim face of his
interlocutor with a feeble sense of relief. He was GOING. And he,
Slinn, would not have to explain anything!
He murmured something about having to go over to the settlement on
business. He dreaded lest Masters should insist upon going into the
tunnel.
"I suppose you want to mail that letter," said Masters, drily. "The
mail don't go till to-morrow, so you've got time to finish it, and put
it in an envelope."
Following the direction of Masters' eyes, Slinn looked down and saw, to
his utter surprise, that he was holding an unfinished pencilled note in
his hand. How it came there, when he had written it, he could not
tell; he dimly remembered that one of his first impulses was to write
to his wife, but that he had already done so he had forgotten. He
hastily concealed the note in his breast-pocket, with a vacant smile.
Masters eyed him half contemptuously, half compassionately.
"Don't forget yourself and drop it in some hollow tree for a
letter-box," he said. "Well--so long!--since you won't drink. Take
care of yourself," and, turning on his heel, Masters walked away.
Slinn watched him as he crossed over to his abandoned claim, saw him
gather his few mining utensils, strap his blanket over his back, lift
his hat on his long-handled shovel as a token of farewell, and then
stride light-heartedly over the ridge.
He was alone now with his secret and his treasure. The only man in the
world who knew of the exact position of his tunnel had gone away
forever. It was not likely that this chance companion of a few weeks
would ever remember him or the locality again; he would now leave his
treasure alone--for even a day perhaps--until he had thought out some
plan and sought out some friend in whom to confide. His secluded life,
the singular habits of concentration which had at last proved so
successful had, at the same time, left him few acquaintances and no
associates. And in all his well-laid plans and patiently-digested
theories for finding the treasure, the means and methods of working it
and disposing of it had never entered.
And now, at the hour when he most needed his faculties, what was the
meaning of this strange benumbing of them!
Patience! He only wanted a little rest--a little time to recover
himself. There was a large boulder under a tree in the highway of the
settlement--a sheltered spot where he had often waited for the coming
of the stage-coach. He would go there, and when he was sufficiently
rested and composed he would go on.
Nevertheless, on his way he diverged and turned into the woods, for no
other apparent purpose than to find a hollow tree. "A hollow tree."
Yes! that was what Masters had said; he remembered it distinctly; and
something was to be done there, but what it was, or why it should be
done, he could not tell. However, it was done, and very luckily, for
his limbs could scarcely support him further, and reaching that boulder
he dropped upon it like another stone.
And now, strange to say, the uneasiness and perplexity which had
possessed him ever since he had stood before his revealed wealth
dropped from him like a burden laid upon the wayside. A measureless
peace stole over him, in which visions of his new-found fortune, no
longer a trouble and perplexity, but crowned with happiness and
blessing to all around him, assumed proportions far beyond his own
weak, selfish plans. In its even-handed benefaction, his wife and
children, his friends and relations, even his late poor companion of
the hillside, met and moved harmoniously together; in its far-reaching
consequences there was only the influence of good. It was not strange
that this poor finite mind should never have conceived the meaning of
the wealth extended to him; or that conceiving it he should faint and
falter under the revelation. Enough that for a few minutes he must
have tasted a joy of perfect anticipation that years of actual
possession might never bring.
The sun seemed to go down in a rosy dream of his own happiness, as he
still sat there. Later, the shadows of the trees thickened and
surrounded him, and still later fell the calm of a quiet evening sky
with far-spaced passionless stars, that seemed as little troubled by
what they looked upon as he was by the stealthy creeping life in the
grasses and underbrush at his feet. The dull patter of soft little
feet in the soft dust of the road, the gentle gleam of moist and
wondering little eyes on the branches and in the mossy edges of the
boulder, did not disturb him. He sat patiently through it all, as if
he had not yet made up his mind.
But when the stage came with the flashing sun the next morning, and the
irresistible clamor of life and action, the driver suddenly laid his
four spirited horses on their haunches before the quiet spot. The
express messenger clambered down from the box, and approached what
seemed to be a heap of cast-off clothes upon the boulder.
"He don't seem to be drunk," he said, in reply to a querulous
interrogation from the passengers. "I can't make him out. His eyes
are open, but he cannot speak or move. Take a look at him, Doc."
A rough unprofessional-looking man here descended from the inside of
the coach, and, carelessly thrusting aside the other curious
passengers, suddenly leant over the heap of clothes in a professional
attitude.
"He is dead," said one of the passengers.
The rough man let the passive head sink softly down again. "No such
luck for him," he said curtly, but not unkindly. "It's a stroke of
paralysis--and about as big as they make 'em. It's a toss-up if he
ever speaks or moves again as long as he lives."
CHAPTER I
When Alvin Mulrady announced his intention of growing potatoes and
garden "truck" on the green slopes of Los Gatos, the mining community
of that region, and the adjacent hamlet of "Rough-and-Ready," regarded
it with the contemptuous indifference usually shown by those
adventurers towards all bucolic pursuits. There was certainly no
active objection to the occupation of two hillsides, which gave so
little promise to the prospector for gold that it was currently
reported that a single prospector, called "Slinn," had once gone mad or
imbecile through repeated failures. The only opposition came,
incongruously enough, from the original pastoral owner of the soil, one
Don Ramon Alvarado, whose claim for seven leagues of hill and valley,
including the now prosperous towns of Rough-and-Ready and Red Dog, was
met with simple derision from the squatters and miners. "Looks ez ef
we woz goin' to travel three thousand miles to open up his d--d old
wilderness, and then pay for the increased valoo we give it--don't it?
Oh, yes, certainly!" was their ironical commentary. Mulrady might have
been pardoned for adopting this popular opinion; but by an equally
incongruous sentiment, peculiar, however, to the man, he called upon
Don Ramon, and actually offered to purchase the land, or "go shares"
with him in the agricultural profits. It was alleged that the Don was
so struck with this concession that he not only granted the land, but
struck up a quaint reserved friendship for the simple-minded
agriculturist and his family. It is scarcely necessary to add that
this intimacy was viewed by the miners with the contempt that it
deserved. They would have been more contemptuous, however, had they
known the opinion that Don Ramon entertained of their particular
vocation, and which he early confided to Mulrady.
"They are savages who expect to reap where they have not sown; to take
out of the earth without returning anything to it but their precious
carcasses; heathens, who worship the mere stones they dig up." "And
was there no Spaniard who ever dug gold?" asked Mulrady, simply. "Ah,
there are Spaniards and Moors," responded Don Ramon, sententiously.
"Gold has been dug, and by caballeros; but no good ever came of it.
There were Alvarados in Sonora, look you, who had mines of SILVER, and
worked them with peons and mules, and lost their money--a gold mine to
work a silver one--like gentlemen! But this grubbing in the dirt with
one's fingers, that a little gold may stick to them, is not for
caballeros. And then, one says nothing of the curse."
"The curse!" echoed Mary Mulrady, with youthful feminine superstition.
"What is that?"
"You knew not, friend Mulrady, that when these lands were given to my
ancestors by Charles V., the Bishop of Monterey laid a curse upon any
who should desecrate them. Good! Let us see! Of the three Americanos
who founded yonder town, one was shot, another died of a
fever--poisoned, you understand, by the soil--and the last got himself
crazy of aguardiente. Even the scientifico,[1] who came here years ago
and spied into the trees and the herbs: he was afterwards punished for
his profanation, and died of an accident in other lands. But," added
Don Ramon, with grave courtesy, "this touches not yourself. Through
me, YOU are of the soil."
Indeed, it would seem as if a secure if not a rapid prosperity was the
result of Don Ramon's manorial patronage. The potato patch and market
garden flourished exceedingly; the rich soil responded with magnificent
vagaries of growth; the even sunshine set the seasons at defiance with
extraordinary and premature crops. The salt pork and biscuit consuming
settlers did not allow their contempt of Mulrady's occupation to
prevent their profiting by this opportunity for changing their diet.
The gold they had taken from the soil presently began to flow into his
pockets in exchange for his more modest treasures. The little cabin,
which barely sheltered his family--a wife, son, and daughter--was
enlarged, extended, and refitted, but in turn abandoned for a more
pretentious house on the opposite hill. A whitewashed fence replaced
the rudely-split rails, which had kept out the wilderness. By degrees,
the first evidences of cultivation--the gashes of red soil, the piles
of brush and undergrowth, the bared boulders, and heaps of
stone--melted away, and were lost under a carpet of lighter green,
which made an oasis in the tawny desert of wild oats on the hillside.
Water was the only free boon denied this Garden of Eden; what was
necessary for irrigation had to be brought from a mining ditch at great
expense, and was of insufficient quantity. In this emergency Mulrady
thought of sinking an artesian well on the sunny slope beside his
house; not, however, without serious consultation and much objection
from his Spanish patron. With great austerity Don Ramon pointed out
that this trifling with the entrails of the earth was not only an
indignity to Nature almost equal to shaft-sinking and tunneling, but
was a disturbance of vested interests. "I and my fathers, San Diego
rest them!" said Don Ramon, crossing himself, "were content with wells
and cisterns, filled by Heaven at its appointed seasons; the cattle,
dumb brutes though they were, knew where to find water when they wanted
it. But thou sayest truly," he added, with a sigh, "that was before
streams and rain were choked with hellish engines, and poisoned with
their spume. Go on, friend Mulrady, dig and bore if thou wilt, but in
a seemly fashion, and not with impious earthquakes of devilish
gunpowder."
With this concession Alvin Mulrady began to sink his first artesian
shaft. Being debarred the auxiliaries of steam and gunpowder, the work
went on slowly. The market garden did not suffer meantime, as Mulrady
had employed two Chinamen to take charge of the ruder tillage, while he
superintended the engineering work of the well. This trifling incident
marked an epoch in the social condition of the family. Mrs. Mulrady at
once assumed a conscious importance among her neighbors. She spoke of
her husband's "men"; she alluded to the well as "the works"; she
checked the easy frontier familiarity of her customers with pretty Mary
Mulrady, her seventeen-year-old daughter. Simple Alvin Mulrady looked
with astonishment at this sudden development of the germ planted in all
feminine nature to expand in the slightest sunshine of prosperity.
"Look yer, Malviny; ain't ye rather puttin' on airs with the boys that
want to be civil to Mamie? Like as not one of 'em may be makin' up to
her already." "You don't mean to say, Alvin Mulrady," responded Mrs.
Mulrady, with sudden severity, "that you ever thought of givin' your
daughter to a common miner, or that I'm goin' to allow her to marry out
of our own set?" "Our own set!" echoed Mulrady feebly, blinking at her
in astonishment, and then glancing hurriedly across at his
freckle-faced son and the two Chinamen at work in the cabbages. "Oh,
you know what I mean," said Mrs. Mulrady sharply; "the set that we move
in. The Alvarados and their friends! Doesn't the old Don come here
every day, and ain't his son the right age for Mamie? And ain't they
the real first families here--all the same as if they were noblemen?
No, leave Mamie to me, and keep to your shaft; there never was a man
yet had the least sabe about these things, or knew what was due to his
family." Like most of his larger minded, but feebler equipped sex,
Mulrady was too glad to accept the truth of the latter proposition,
which left the meannesses of life to feminine manipulation, and went
off to his shaft on the hillside. But during that afternoon he was
perplexed and troubled. He was too loyal a husband not to be pleased
with this proof of an unexpected and superior foresight in his wife,
although he was, like all husbands, a little startled by it. He tried
to dismiss it from his mind. But looking down from the hillside upon
his little venture, where gradual increase and prosperity had not been
beyond his faculties to control and understand, he found himself
haunted by the more ambitious projects of his helpmate. From his own
knowledge of men, he doubted if Don Ramon, any more than himself, had
ever thought of the possibility of a matrimonial connection between the
families. He doubted if he would consent to it. And unfortunately it
was this very doubt that, touching his own pride as a self-made man,
made him first seriously consider his wife's proposition. He was as
good as Don Ramon, any day! With this subtle feminine poison instilled
in his veins, carried completely away by the logic of his wife's
illogical premises, he almost hated his old benefactor. He looked down
upon the little Garden of Eden, where his Eve had just tempted him with
the fatal fruit, and felt a curious consciousness that he was losing
its simple and innocent enjoyment forever.
Happily, about this time Don Ramon died. It is not probable that he
ever knew the amiable intentions of Mrs. Mulrady in regard to his son,
who now succeeded to the paternal estate, sadly partitioned by
relatives and lawsuits. The feminine Mulradys attended the funeral, in
expensive mourning from Sacramento; even the gentle Alvin was forced
into ready-made broadcloth, which accented his good-natured but
unmistakably common presence. Mrs. Mulrady spoke openly of her "loss";
declared that the old families were dying out; and impressed the wives
of a few new arrivals at Red Dog with the belief that her own family
was contemporary with the Alvarados, and that her husband's health was
far from perfect. She extended a motherly sympathy to the orphaned Don
Caesar. Reserved, like his father, in natural disposition, he was still
more gravely ceremonious from his loss; and, perhaps from the shyness
of an evident partiality for Mamie Mulrady, he rarely availed himself
of her mother's sympathizing hospitality. But he carried out the
intentions of his father by consenting to sell to Mulrady, for a small
sum, the property he had leased. The idea of purchasing had originated
with Mrs. Mulrady.
"It'll be all in the family," had observed that astute lady, "and it's
better for the looks of the things that we shouldn't he his tenants."
It was only a few weeks later that she was startled by hearing her
husband's voice calling her from the hillside as he rapidly approached
the house. Mamie was in her room putting on a new pink cotton gown, in
honor of an expected visit from young Don Caesar, and Mrs. Mulrady was
tidying the house in view of the same event. Something in the tone of
her good man's voice, and the unusual circumstance of his return to the
house before work was done, caused her, however, to drop her dusting
cloth, and run to the kitchen door to meet him. She saw him running
through the rows of cabbages, his face shining with perspiration and
excitement, a light in his eyes which she had not seen for years. She
recalled, without sentiment, that he looked like that when she had
called him--a poor farm hand of her father's--out of the brush heap at
the back of their former home, in Illinois, to learn the consent of her
parents. The recollection was the more embarrassing as he threw his
arms around her, and pressed a resounding kiss upon her sallow cheek.
"Sakes alive! Mulrady!" she said, exorcising the ghost of a blush that
had also been recalled from the past with her housewife's apron, "what
are you doin', and company expected every minit?"
"Malviny, I've struck it; and struck it rich!"
She disengaged herself from his arms, without excitement, and looked at
him with bright but shrewdly observant eyes.
"I've struck it in the well--the regular vein that the boys have been
looking fer. There's a fortin' fer you and Mamie: thousands and tens
of thousands!"
"Wait a minit."
She left him quickly, and went to the foot of the stairs. He could
hear her wonderingly and distinctly. "Ye can take off that new frock,
Mamie," she called out.
There was a sound of undisguised expostulation from Mamie.
"I'm speaking," said Mrs. Mulrady, emphatically.
The murmuring ceased. Mrs. Mulrady returned to her husband. The
interruption seemed to have taken off the keen edge of his enjoyment.
He at once abdicated his momentary elevation as a discoverer, and
waited for her to speak.
"Ye haven't told any one yet?" she asked.
"No. I was alone, down in the shaft. Ye see, Malviny, I wasn't
expectin' of anything." He began, with an attempt at fresh enjoyment,
"I was just clearin' out, and hadn't reckoned on anythin'."
"You see, I was right when I advised you taking the land," she said,
without heeding him.
Mulrady's face fell. "I hope Don Caesar won't think"--he began,
hesitatingly. "I reckon, perhaps, I oughter make some sorter
compensation--you know."
"Stuff!" said Mrs. Mulrady, decidedly. "Don't be a fool. Any gold
discovery, anyhow, would have been yours--that's the law. And you
bought the land without any restrictions. Besides, you never had any
idea of this!"--she stopped, and looked him suddenly in the face--"had
you?"
Mulrady opened his honest, pale-gray eyes widely.
"Why, Malviny! You know I hadn't. I could swear!"
"Don't swear, and don't let on to anybody but what you DID know it was
there. Now, Alvin Mulrady, listen to me." Her voice here took the
strident form of action. "Knock off work at the shaft, and send your
man away at once. Put on your things, catch the next stage to
Sacramento at four o'clock, and take Mamie with you."
"Mamie!" echoed Mulrady, feebly.
"You want to see Lawyer Cole and my brother Jim at once," she went on,
without heeding him, "and Mamie wants a change and some proper.
clothes. Leave the rest to me and Abner. I'll break it to Mamie, and
get her ready."
Mulrady passed his hands through his tangled hair, wet with
perspiration. He was proud of his wife's energy and action; he did not
dream of opposing her, but somehow he was disappointed. The charming
glamour and joy of his discovery had vanished before he could fairly
dazzle her with it; or, rather, she was not dazzled with it at all. It
had become like business, and the expression "breaking it" to Mamie
jarred upon him. He would have preferred to tell her himself; to watch
the color come into her delicate oval face, to have seen her soft eyes
light with an innocent joy he had not seen in his wife's; and he felt a
sinking conviction that his wife was the last one to awaken it.
"You ain't got any time to lose," she said, impatiently, as he
hesitated.
Perhaps it was her impatience that struck harshly upon him; perhaps, if
she had not accepted her good fortune so confidently, he would not have
spoken what was in his mind at the time; but he said gravely, "Wait a
minit, Malviny; I've suthin' to tell you 'bout this find of mine that's
sing'lar."
"Go on," she said, quickly.
"Lyin' among the rotten quartz of the vein was a pick," he said,
constrainedly; "and the face of the vein sorter looked ez if it had
been worked at. Follering the line outside to the base of the hill
there was signs of there having been an old tunnel; but it had fallen
in, and was blocked up."
"Well?" said Mrs. Mulrady, contemptuously.
"Well," returned her husband, somewhat disconnectedly, "it kinder
looked as if some feller might have discovered it before."
"And went away, and left it for others! That's likely--ain't it?"
interrupted his wife, with ill-disguised intolerance. "Everybody knows
the hill wasn't worth that for prospectin'; and it was abandoned when
we came here. It's your property and you've paid for it. Are you
goin' to wait to advertise for the owner, Alvin Mulrady, or are you
going to Sacramento at four o'clock to-day?"
Mulrady started. He had never seriously believed in the possibility of
a previous discovery; but his conscientious nature had prompted him to
give it a fair consideration. She was probably right. What he might
have thought had she treated it with equal conscientiousness he did not
consider. "All right," he said simply. "I reckon we'll go at once."
"And when you talk to Lawyer Cole and Jim, keep that silly stuff about
the pick to yourself. There's no use of putting queer ideas into other
people's heads because you happen to have 'em yourself."
When the hurried arrangements were at last completed, and Mr. Mulrady
and Mamie, accompanied by a taciturn and discreet Chinaman, carrying
their scant luggage, were on their way to the high road to meet the up
stage, the father gazed somewhat anxiously and wistfully into his
daughter's face. He had looked forward to those few moments to enjoy
the freshness and naivete of Mamie's youthful delight and enthusiasm as
a relief to his wife's practical, far-sighted realism. There was a
pretty pink suffusion in her delicate cheek, the breathless happiness
of a child in her half-opened little mouth, and a beautiful absorption
in her large gray eyes that augured well for him.
"Well, Mamie, how do we like bein' an heiress? How do we like layin'
over all the gals between this and 'Frisco?"
"Eh?"
She had not heard him. The tender beautiful eyes were engaged in an
anticipatory examination of the remembered shelves in the "Fancy
Emporium" at Sacramento; in reading the admiration of the clerks; in
glancing down a little criticisingly at the broad cowhide brogues that
strode at her side; in looking up the road for the stage-coach; in
regarding the fit of her new gloves--everywhere but in the loving eyes
of the man beside her.
He, however, repeated the question, touched with her charming
preoccupation, and passing his arm around her little waist.
"I like it well enough, pa, you know!" she said, slightly disengaging
his arm, but adding a perfunctory little squeeze to his elbow to soften
the separation. "I always had an idea SOMETHING would happen. I
suppose I'm looking like a fright," she added; "but ma made me hurry to
get away before Don Caesar came."
"And you didn't want to go without seeing him?" he added, archly.
"I didn't want him to see me in this frock," said Mamie, simply. "I
reckon that's why ma made me change," she added, with a slight laugh.
"Well I reckon you're allus good enough for him in any dress," said
Mulrady, watching her attentively; "and more than a match for him NOW,"
he added, triumphantly.
"I don't know about that," said Mamie. "He's been rich all the time,
and his father and grandfather before him; while we've been poor and
his tenants."
His face changed; the look of bewilderment, with which he had followed
her words, gave way to one of pain, and then of anger. "Did he get off
such stuff as that?" he asked, quickly.
"No. I'd like to catch him at it," responded Mamie, promptly. "There's
better nor him to be had for the asking now."
They had walked on a few moments in aggrieved silence, and the Chinaman
might have imagined some misfortune had just befallen them. But
Mamie's teeth shone again between her parted lips. "La, pa! it ain't
that! He cares everything for me, and I do for him; and if ma hadn't
got new ideas--" She stopped suddenly.
"What new ideas?" queried her father, anxiously.
"Oh, nothing! I wish, pa, you'd put on your other boots! Everybody can
see these are made for the farrows. And you ain't a market gardener
any more."
"What am I, then?" asked Mulrady, with a half-pleased, half-uneasy
laugh.
"You're a capitalist, I say; but ma says a landed proprietor."
Nevertheless, the landed proprietor, when he reached the boulder on the
Red Dog highway, sat down in somewhat moody contemplation, with his
head bowed over the broad cowhide brogues, that seemed to have already
gathered enough of the soil to indicate his right to that title.
Mamie, who had recovered her spirits, but had not lost her
preoccupation, wandered off by herself in the meadow, or ascended the
hillside, as her occasional impatience at the delay of the coach, or
the following of some ambitious fancy, alternately prompted her. She
was so far away at one time that the stage-coach, which finally drew up
before Mulrady, was obliged to wait for her.
When she was deposited safely inside, and Mulrady had climbed to the
box beside the driver, the latter remarked, curtly,--
"Ye gave me a right smart skeer, a minit ago, stranger."
"Ez how?"
"Well, about three years ago, I was comin' down this yer grade, at just
this time, and sittin' right on that stone, in just your attitude, was
a man about your build and years. I pulled up to let him in, when,
darn my skin! if he ever moved, but sorter looked at me without
speakin'. I called to him, and he never answered, 'cept with that
idiotic stare. I then let him have my opinion of him, in mighty strong
English, and drove off, leavin' him there. The next morning, when I
came by on the up-trip, darn my skin! if he wasn't thar, but lyin' all
of a heap on the boulder. Jim drops down and picks him up. Doctor
Duchesne, ez was along, allowst it was a played-out prospector, with a
big case of paralysis, and we expressed him through to the County
Hospital, like so much dead freight. I've allus been kinder
superstitious about passin' that rock, and when I saw you jist now,
sittin' thar, dazed like, with your head down like the other chap, it
rather threw me off my centre."
In the inexplicable and half-superstitious uneasiness that this
coincidence awakened in Mulrady's unimaginative mind, he was almost on
the point of disclosing his good fortune to the driver, in order to
prove how preposterous was the parallel, but checked himself in time.
"Did you find out who he was?" broke in a rash passenger. "Did you
ever get over it?" added another unfortunate.
With a pause of insulting scorn at the interruption, the driver
resumed, pointedly, to Mulrady: "The pint of the whole thing was my
cussin' a helpless man, ez could neither cuss back nor shoot; and then
afterwards takin' you for his ghost layin' for me to get even." He
paused again, and then added, carelessly, "They say he never kem to
enuff to let on who he was or whar he kem from; and he was eventooally
taken to a 'Sylum for Doddering Idjits and Gin'ral and Permiskus
Imbeciles at Sacramento. I've heerd it's considered a first-class
institooshun, not only for them ez is paralyzed and can't talk, as for
them ez is the reverse and is too chipper. Now," he added, languidly
turning for the first time to his miserable questioners, "how did YOU
find it?"
[1] Don Ramon probably alluded to the eminent naturalist Douglas, who
visited California before the gold excitement, and died of an accident
in the Sandwich Islands.
CHAPTER II
When the news of the discovery of gold in Mulrady shaft was finally
made public, it created an excitement hitherto unknown in the history
of the country. Half of Red Dog and all Rough-and-Ready were emptied
upon the yellow hills surrounding Mulrady's, until their circling camp
fires looked like a besieging army that had invested his peaceful
pastoral home, preparatory to carrying it by assault. Unfortunately
for them, they found the various points of vantage already garrisoned
with notices of "preemption" for mining purposes in the name of the
various members of the Alvarado family. This stroke of business was due
to Mrs. Mulrady, as a means of mollifying the conscientious scruples of
her husband and of placating the Alvarados, in view of some remote
contingency. It is but fair to say that this degradation of his
father's Castilian principles was opposed by Don Caesar. "You needn't
work them yourself, but sell out to them that will; it's the only way
to keep the prospectors from taking it without paying for it at all,"
argued Mrs. Mulrady. Don Caesar finally assented; perhaps less to the
business arguments of Mulrady's wife than to the simple suggestion of
Mamie's mother. Enough that he realized a sum in money for a few acres
that exceeded the last ten years' income of Don Ramon's seven leagues.
Equally unprecedented and extravagant was the realization of the
discovery in Mulrady's shaft. It was alleged that a company, hastily
formed in Sacramento, paid him a million of dollars down, leaving him
still a controlling two-thirds interest in the mine. With an obstinacy,
however, that amounted almost to a moral conviction, he refused to
include the house and potato-patch in the property. When the company
had yielded the point, he declined, with equal tenacity, to part with
it to outside speculators on even the most extravagant offers. In vain
Mrs. Mulrady protested; in vain she pointed out to him that the
retention of the evidence of his former humble occupation was a green
blot upon their social escutcheon.
"If you will keep the land, build on it, and root up the garden." But
Mulrady was adamant.
"It's the only thing I ever made myself, and got out of the soil with
my own hands; it's the beginning of my fortune, and it may be the end
of it. Mebbee I'll be glad enough to have it to come back to some day,
and be thankful for the square meal I can dig out of it."
By repeated pressure, however, Mulrady yielded the compromise that a
portion of it should be made into a vineyard and flower-garden, and by
a suitable coloring of ornament and luxury obliterate its vulgar part.
Less successful, however, was that energetic woman in another effort to
mitigate the austerities of their earlier state. It occurred to her to
utilize the softer accents of Don Caesar in the pronunciation of their
family name, and privately had "Mulrade" take the place of Mulrady on
her visiting card. "It might be Spanish," she argued with her husband.
"Lawyer Cole says most American names are corrupted, and how do you
know that yours ain't?" Mulrady, who would not swear that his
ancestors came from Ireland to the Carolinas in '98, was helpless to
refute the assertion. But the terrible Nemesis of an un-Spanish,
American provincial speech avenged the orthographical outrage at once.
When Mrs. Mulrady began to be addressed orally, as well as by letter,
as "Mrs. Mulraid," and when simple amatory effusions to her daughter
rhymed with "lovely maid," she promptly refused the original vowel. But
she fondly clung to the Spanish courtesy which transformed her
husband's baptismal name, and usually spoke of him--in his absence--as
"Don Alvino." But in the presence of his short, square figure, his
orange tawny hair, his twinkling gray eyes, and retrousse nose, even
that dominant woman withheld his title. It was currently reported at
Red Dog that a distinguished foreigner had one day approached Mulrady
with the formula, "I believe I have the honor of addressing Don Alvino
Mulrady?" "You kin bet your boots, stranger, that's me," had returned
that simple hidalgo.
Although Mrs. Mulrady would have preferred that Mamie should remain at
Sacramento until she could join her, preparatory to a trip to "the
States" and Europe, she yielded to her daughter's desire to astonish
Rough-and-Ready, before she left, with her new wardrobe, and unfold in
the parent nest the delicate and painted wings with which she was to
fly from them forever. "I don't want them to remember me afterwards in
those spotted prints, ma, and like as not say I never had a decent
frock until I went away." There was something so like the daughter of
her mother in this delicate foresight that the touched and gratified
parent kissed her, and assented. The result was gratifying beyond her
expectation. In that few weeks' sojourn at Sacramento, the young girl
seemed to have adapted and assimilated herself to the latest modes of
fashion with even more than the usual American girl's pliancy and
taste. Equal to all emergencies of style and material, she seemed to
supply, from some hitherto unknown quality she possessed, the grace and
manner peculiar to each. Untrammeled by tradition, education, or
precedent, she had the Western girl's confidence in all things being
possible, which made them so often probable. Mr. Mulrady looked at his
daughter with mingled sentiments of pride and awe. Was it possible that
this delicate creature, so superior to him that he seemed like a
degenerate scion of her remoter race, was his own flesh and blood? Was
she the daughter of her mother, who even in her remembered youth was
never equipped like this? If the thought brought no pleasure to his
simple, loving nature, it at least spared him the pain of what might
have seemed ingratitude in one more akin to himself. "The fact is, we
ain't quite up to her style," was his explanation and apology. A vague
belief that in another and a better world than this he might
approximate and understand this perfection somewhat soothed and
sustained him.
It was quite consistent, therefore, that the embroidered cambric dress
which Mamie Mulrady wore one summer afternoon on the hillside at Los
Gatos, while to the critical feminine eye at once artistic and
expensive, should not seem incongruous to her surroundings or to
herself in the eyes of a general audience. It certainly did not seem
so to one pair of frank, humorous ones that glanced at her from time to
time, as their owner, a young fellow of five-and-twenty, walked at her
side. He was the new editor of the "Rough-and-Ready Record," and,
having been her fellow-passenger from Sacramento, had already once or
twice availed himself of her father's invitation to call upon them.
Mrs. Mulrady had not discouraged this mild flirtation. Whether she
wished to disconcert Don Caesar for some occult purpose, or whether,
like the rest of her sex, she had an overweening confidence in the
unheroic, unseductive, and purely platonic character of masculine
humor, did not appear.
"When I say I'm sorry you are going to leave us, Miss Mulrady," said
the young fellow, lightly, "you will comprehend my unselfishness, since
I frankly admit your departure would be a positive relief to me as an
editor and a man. The pressure in the Poet's Corner of the 'Record'
since it was mistakingly discovered that a person of your name might be
induced to seek the 'glade' and 'shade' without being 'afraid,'
'dismayed,' or 'betrayed,' has been something enormous, and,
unfortunately, I am debarred from rejecting anything, on the just
ground that I am myself an interested admirer."
"It's dreadful to be placarded around the country by one's own full
name, isn't it?" said Mamie, without, however, expressing much horror
in her face.
"They think it much more respectful than to call you 'Mamie,'" he
responded, lightly; "and many of your admirers are middle-aged men,
with a mediaeval style of compliment. I've discovered that amatory
versifying wasn't entirely a youthful passion. Colonel Cash is about
as fatal with a couplet as with a double-barreled gun, and scatters as
terribly. Judge Butts and Dr. Wilson have both discerned the
resemblance of your gifts to those of Venus, and their own to Apollo.
But don't undervalue those tributes, Miss Mulrady," he added, more
seriously. "You'll have thousands of admirers where you are going; but
you'll be willing to admit in the end, I think, that none were more
honest and respectful than your subjects at Rough-and-Ready and Red
Dog." He stopped, and added in a graver tone, "Does Don Caesar write
poetry?"
"He has something better to do," said the young lady, pertly.
"I can easily imagine that," he returned, mischievously; "it must be a
pallid substitute for other opportunities."
"What did you come here for?" she asked, suddenly.
"To see you."
"Nonsense! You know what I mean. Why did you ever leave Sacramento to
come here? I should think it would suit you so much better than this
place."
"I suppose I was fired by your father's example, and wished to find a
gold mine."
"Men like you never do," she said, simply.
"Is that a compliment, Miss Mulrady?"
"I don't know. But I think that you think that it is."
He gave her the pleased look of one who had unexpectedly found a
sympathetic intelligence. "Do I? This is interesting. Let's sit
down." In their desultory rambling they had reached, quite
unconsciously, the large boulder at the roadside. Mamie hesitated a
moment, looked up and down the road, and then, with an already opulent
indifference to the damaging of her spotless skirt, sat herself upon
it, with her furled parasol held by her two little hands thrown over
her half-drawn-up knee. The young editor, half sitting, half leaning,
against the stone, began to draw figures in the sand with his cane.
"On the contrary, Miss Mulrady, I hope to make some money here. You are
leaving Rough-and-Ready because you are rich. We are coming to it
because we are poor."
"We?" echoed Mamie, lazily, looking up the road.
"Yes. My father and two sisters."
"I am sorry. I might have known them if I hadn't been going away." At
the same moment, it flashed across her mind that, if they were like the
man before her, they might prove disagreeably independent and critical.
"Is your father in business?" she asked.
He shook his head. After a pause, he said, punctuating his sentences
with the point of his stick in the soft dust, "He is paralyzed, and out
of his mind, Miss Mulrady. I came to California to seek him, as all
news of him ceased three years since; and I found him only two weeks
ago, alone, friendless--an unrecognized pauper in the county hospital."
"Two weeks ago? That was when I went to Sacramento."
"Very probably."
"It must have been very shocking to you?"
"It was."
"I should think you'd feel real bad?"
"I do, at times." He smiled, and laid his stick on the stone. "You now
see, Miss Mulrady, how necessary to me is this good fortune that you
don't think me worthy of. Meantime I must try to make a home for them
at Rough-and-Ready."
Miss Mulrady put down her knee and her parasol. "We mustn't stay here
much longer, you know."
"Why?"
"Why, the stage-coach comes by at about this time."
"And you think the passengers will observe us sitting here?"
"Of course they will."
"Miss Mulrady, I implore you to stay."
He was leaning over her with such apparent earnestness of voice and
gesture that the color came into her cheek. For a moment she scarcely
dared to lift her conscious eyes to his. When she did so, she suddenly
glanced her own aside with a flash of anger. He was laughing.
"If you have any pity for me, do not leave me now," he repeated. "Stay
a moment longer, and my fortune is made. The passengers will report us
all over Red Dog as engaged. I shall be supposed to be in your
father's secrets, and shall be sought after as a director of all the
new companies. The 'Record' will double its circulation; poetry will
drop out of its columns, advertising rush to fill its place, and I
shall receive five dollars a week more salary, if not seven and a half.
Never mind the consequences to yourself at such a moment. I assure you
there will be none. You can deny it the next day--I will deny it--nay,
more, the 'Record' itself will deny it in an extra edition of one
thousand copies, at ten cents each. Linger a moment longer, Miss
Mulrady. Fly, oh fly not yet. They're coming--hark! oh! By Jove,
it's only Don Caesar!"
It was, indeed, only the young scion of the house of Alvarado,
blue-eyed, sallow-skinned, and high-shouldered, coming towards them on
a fiery, half-broken mustang, whose very spontaneous lawlessness seemed
to accentuate and bring out the grave and decorous ease of his rider.
Even in his burlesque preoccupation the editor of the "Record" did not
withhold his admiration of this perfect horsemanship. Mamie, who, in
her wounded amour propre, would like to have made much of it to annoy
her companion, was thus estopped any ostentatious compliment.
Don Caesar lifted his hat with sweet seriousness to the lady, with
grave courtesy to the gentleman. While the lower half of this Centaur
was apparently quivering with fury, and stamping the ground in his
evident desire to charge upon the pair, the upper half, with natural
dignity, looked from the one to the other, as if to leave the privilege
of an explanation with them. But Mamie was too wise, and her companion
too indifferent, to offer one. A slight shade passed over Don Caesar's
face. To complicate the situation at that moment, the expected
stagecoach came rattling by. With quick feminine intuition, Mamie
caught in the faces of the driver and the expressman, and reflected in
the mischievous eyes of her companion, a peculiar interpretation of
their meeting, that was not removed by the whispered assurance of the
editor that the passengers were anxiously looking back "to see the
shooting."
The young Spaniard, equally oblivious of humor or curiosity, remained
impassive.
"You know Mr. Slinn, of the 'Record," said Mamie, "don't you?"
Don Caesar had never before met the Senor Esslinn. He was under the
impression that it was a Senor Robinson that was of the "Record."
"Oh, HE was shot," said Slinn. "I'm taking his place."
"Bueno! To be shot too? I trust not."
Slinn looked quickly and sharply into Don Caesar's grave face. He
seemed to be incapable of any double meaning. However, as he had no
serious reason for awakening Don Caesar's jealousy, and very little
desire to become an embarrassing third in this conversation, and
possibly a burden to the young lady, he proceeded to take his leave of
her. From a sudden feminine revulsion of sympathy, or from some
unintelligible instinct of diplomacy, Mamie said, as she extended her
hand, "I hope you'll find a home for your family near here. Mamma
wants pa to let our old house. Perhaps it might suit you, if not too
far from your work. You might speak to ma about it."
"Thank you; I will," responded the young man, pressing her hand with
unaffected cordiality.
Don Caesar watched him until he had disappeared behind the wayside
buckeyes.
"He is a man of family--this one--your countryman?"
It seemed strange to her to have a mere acquaintance spoken of as "her
countryman"--not the first time nor the last time in her career. As
there appeared no trace or sign of jealousy in her questioner's manner,
she answered briefly but vaguely:
"Yes; it's a shocking story. His father disappeared some years ago,
and he has just found him--a helpless paralytic--in the Sacramento
Hospital. He'll have to support him--and they're very poor."
"So, then, they are not independent of each other always--these fathers
and children of Americans!"
"No," said Mamie, shortly. Without knowing why, she felt inclined to
resent Don Caesar's manner. His serious gravity--gentle and high-bred
as it was, undoubtedly--was somewhat trying to her at times, and seemed
even more so after Slinn's irreverent humor. She picked up her
parasol, a little impatiently, as if to go.
But Don Caesar had already dismounted, and tied his horse to a tree
with a strong lariat that hung at his saddle-bow.
"Let us walk through the woods towards your home. I can return alone
for the horse when you shall dismiss me."
They turned in among the pines that, overcrowding the hollow, crept
partly up the side of the hill of Mulrady's shaft. A disused trail,
almost hidden by the waxen-hued yerba buena, led from the highway, and
finally lost itself in the undergrowth. It was a lovers' walk; they
were lovers, evidently, and yet the man was too self-poised in his
gravity, the young woman too conscious and critical, to suggest an
absorbing or oblivious passion.
"I should not have made myself so obtrusive to-day before your friend,"
said Don Caesar, with proud humility, "but I could not understand from
your mother whether you were alone or whether my company was desirable.
It is of this I have now to speak, Mamie. Lately your mother has seemed
strange to me; avoiding any reference to our affection; treating it
lightly, and even as to-day, I fancy, putting obstacles in the way of
our meeting alone. She was disappointed at your return from Sacramento
where, I have been told, she intended you to remain until you left the
country; and since your return I have seen you but twice. I may be
wrong. Perhaps I do not comprehend the American mother; I have--who
knows?--perhaps offended in some point of etiquette, omitted some
ceremony that was her due. But when you told me, Mamie, that it was
not necessary to speak to HER first, that it was not the American
fashion--"
Mamie started, and blushed slightly.
"Yes," she said hurriedly, "certainly; but ma has been quite queer of
late, and she may think--you know--that since--since there has been so
much property to dispose of, she ought to have been consulted."
"Then let us consult her at once, dear child! And as to the property,
in Heaven's name, let her dispose of it as she will. Saints forbid that
an Alvarado should ever interfere. And what is it to us, my little
one? Enough that Dona Mameta Alvarado will never have less state than
the richest bride that ever came to Los Gatos."
Mamie had not forgotten that, scarcely a month ago, even had she loved
the man before her no more than she did at present, she would still
have been thrilled with delight at these words! Even now she was
moved--conscious as she had become that the "state" of a bride of the
Alvarados was not all she had imagined, and that the bare adobe court
of Los Gatos was open to the sky and the free criticism of Sacramento
capitalists!
"Yes, dear," she murmured with a half childlike pleasure, that lit up
her face and eyes so innocently that it stopped any minute
investigation into its origin and real meaning. "Yes, dear; but we
need not have a fuss made about it at present, and perhaps put ma
against us. She wouldn't hear of our marrying now; and she might
forbid our engagement."
"But you are going away."
"I should have to go to New York or Europe FIRST, you know," she
answered, naively, "even if it were all settled. I should have to get
things! One couldn't be decent here."
With the recollection of the pink cotton gown, in which she had first
pledged her troth to him, before his eyes, he said, "But you are
charming now. You cannot be more so to me. If I am satisfied, little
one, with you as you are, let us go together, and then you can get
dresses to please others."
She had not expected this importunity. Really, if it came to this, she
might have engaged herself to some one like Slinn; he at least would
have understood her. He was much cleverer, and certainly more of a man
of the world. When Slinn had treated her like a child, it was with the
humorous tolerance of an admiring superior, and not the didactic
impulse of a guardian. She did not say this, nor did her pretty eyes
indicate it, as in the instance of her brief anger with Slinn. She
only said gently,--
"I should have thought you, of all men, would have been particular
about your wife doing the proper thing. But never mind! Don't let us
talk any more about it. Perhaps as it seems such a great thing to you,
and so much trouble, there may be no necessity for it at all."
I do not think that the young lady deliberately planned this charmingly
illogical deduction from Don Caesar's speech, or that she calculated
its effect upon him; but it was part of her nature to say it, and
profit by it. Under the unjust lash of it, his pride gave way.
"Ah, do you not see why I wish to go with you?" he said, with sudden
and unexpected passion. "You are beautiful; you are good; it has
pleased Heaven to make you rich also; but you are a child in
experience, and know not your own heart. With your beauty, your
goodness, and your wealth, you will attract all to you--as you do
here--because you cannot help it. But you will be equally helpless,
little one, if THEY should attract YOU, and you had no tie to fall back
upon."
It was an unfortunate speech. The words were Don Caesar's; but the
thought she had heard before from her mother, although the deduction
had been of a very different kind. Mamie followed the speaker with
bright but visionary eyes. There must be some truth in all this. Her
mother had said it; Mr. Slinn had laughingly admitted it. She HAD a
brilliant future before her! Was she right in making it impossible by
a rash and foolish tie? He himself had said she was inexperienced.
She knew it; and yet, what was he doing now but taking advantage of
that inexperience? If he really loved her, he would be willing to
submit to the test. She did not ask a similar one from him; and was
willing, if she came out of it free, to marry him just the same. There
was something so noble in this thought that she felt for a moment
carried away by an impulse of compassionate unselfishness, and smiled
tenderly as she looked up in his face.
"Then you consent, Mamie?" he said, eagerly, passing his arm around her
waist.
"Not now, Caesar," she said, gently disengaging herself. "I must think
it over; we are both too young to act upon it rashly; it would be
unfair to you, who are so quiet and have seen so few girls--I mean
Americans--to tie yourself to the first one you have known. When I am
gone you will go more into the world. There are Mr. Slinn's two
sisters coming here--I shouldn't wonder if they were far cleverer and
talked far better than I do--and think how I should feel if I knew that
only a wretched pledge to me kept you from loving them!" She stopped,
and cast down her eyes.
It was her first attempt at coquetry, for, in her usual charming
selfishness, she was perfectly frank and open; and it might not have
been her last, but she had gone too far at first, and was not prepared
for a recoil of her own argument.
"If you admit that it is possible--that it is possible to you!" he
said, quickly.
She saw her mistake. "We may not have many opportunities to meet
alone," she answered, quietly; "and I am sure we would be happier when
we meet not to accuse each other of impossibilities. Let us rather see
how we can communicate together, if anything should prevent our
meeting. Remember, it was only by chance that you were able to see me
now. If ma has believed that she ought to have been consulted, our
meeting together in this secret way will only make matters worse. She
is even now wondering where I am, and may be suspicious. I must go
back at once. At any moment some one may come here looking for me."
"But I have so much to say," he pleaded. "Our time has been so short."
"You can write."
"But what will your mother think of that?" he said, in grave
astonishment.
She colored again as she returned, quickly, "Of course, you must not
write to the house. You can leave a letter somewhere for me--say,
somewhere about here. Stop!" she added, with a sudden girlish gayety,
"see, here's the very place. Look there!"
She pointed to the decayed trunk of a blasted sycamore, a few feet from
the trail. A cavity, breast high, half filled with skeleton leaves and
pine-nuts, showed that it had formerly been a squirrel's hoard, but for
some reason had been deserted.
"Look! it's a regular letter-box," she continued, gayly, rising on
tip-toe to peep into its recesses. Don Caesar looked at her
admiringly; it seemed like a return to their first idyllic love-making
in the old days, when she used to steal out of the cabbage rows in her
brown linen apron and sun-bonnet to walk with him in the woods. He
recalled the fact to her with the fatality of a lover already seeking
to restore in past recollections something that was wanting in the
present. She received it with the impatience of youth, to whom the
present is all sufficient.
"I wonder how you could ever have cared for me in that holland apron,"
she said, looking down upon her new dress.
"Shall I tell you why?" he said, fondly, passing his arm around her
waist, and drawing her pretty head nearer his shoulder.
"No--not now!" she said, laughingly, but struggling to free herself.
"There's not time. Write it, and put it in the box. There," she added,
hastily, "listen!--what's that?"
"It's only a squirrel," he whispered reassuringly in her ear.
"No; it's somebody coming! I must go! Please! Caesar, dear! There,
then--"
She met his kiss half-way, released herself with a lithe movement of
her wrist and shoulder, and the next moment seemed to slip into the
woods, and was gone.
Don Caesar listened with a sigh as the last rustling ceased, cast a
look at the decayed tree as if to fix it in his memory, and then slowly
retraced his steps towards his tethered mustang.
He was right, however, in his surmise of the cause of that
interruption. A pair of bright eyes had been watching them from the
bough of an adjacent tree. It was a squirrel, who, having had serious
and prior intentions of making use of the cavity they had discovered,
had only withheld examination by an apparent courteous discretion
towards the intruding pair. Now that they were gone he slipped down
the tree and ran towards the decayed stump.
CHAPTER III
Apparently dissatisfied with the result of an investigation, which
proved that the cavity was unfit as a treasure hoard for a discreet
squirrel, whatever its value as a receptacle for the love-tokens of
incautious humanity, the little animal at once set about to put things
in order. He began by whisking out an immense quantity of dead leaves,
disturbed a family of tree-spiders, dissipated a drove of patient
aphides browsing in the bark, as well as their attendant dairymen, the
ants, and otherwise ruled it with the high hand of dispossession and a
contemptuous opinion of the previous incumbents. It must not be
supposed, however, that his proceedings were altogether free from
contemporaneous criticism; a venerable crow sitting on a branch above
him displayed great interest in his occupation, and, hopping down a few
moments afterwards, disposed of some worm-eaten nuts, a few larvae, and
an insect or two, with languid dignity and without prejudice. Certain
incumbrances, however, still resisted the squirrel's general eviction;
among them a folded square of paper with sharply defined edges, that
declined investigation, and, owing to a nauseous smell of tobacco,
escaped nibbling as it had apparently escaped insect ravages. This,
owing to its sharp angles, which persisted in catching in the soft
decaying wood in his whirlwind of house-cleaning, he allowed to remain.
Having thus, in a general way, prepared for the coming winter, the
self-satisfied little rodent dismissed the subject from his active mind.
His rage and indignation a few days later may be readily conceived,
when he found, on returning to his new-made home, another square of
paper, folded like the first, but much fresher and whiter, lying within
the cavity, on top of some moss which had evidently been placed there
for the purpose. This he felt was really more than he could bear, but
it was smaller, and with a few energetic kicks and whisks of his tail
he managed to finally dislodge it through the opening, where it fell
ignominiously to the earth. The eager eyes of the ever-attendant crow,
however, instantly detected it; he flew to the ground, and, turning it
over, examined it gravely. It was certainly not edible, but it was
exceedingly rare, and, as an old collector of curios, he felt he could
not pass it by. He lifted it in his beak, and, with a desperate
struggle against the superincumbent weight, regained the branch with
his prize. Here, by one of those delicious vagaries of animal nature,
he apparently at once discharged his mind of the whole affair, became
utterly oblivious of it, allowed it to drop without the least concern,
and eventually flew away with an abstracted air, as if he had been
another bird entirely. The paper got into a manzanita bush, where it
remained suspended until the evening, when, being dislodged by a
passing wild-cat on its way to Mulrady's hen-roost, it gave that
delicately sensitive marauder such a turn that she fled into the
adjacent county.
But the troubles of the squirrel were not yet over. On the following
day the young man who had accompanied the young woman returned to the
trunk, and the squirrel had barely time to make his escape before the
impatient visitor approached the opening of the cavity, peered into it,
and even passed his hand through its recesses. The delight visible
upon his anxious and serious face at the disappearance of the letter,
and the apparent proof that it had been called for, showed him to have
been its original depositor, and probably awakened a remorseful
recollection in the dark bosom of the omnipresent crow, who uttered a
conscious-stricken croak from the bough above him. But the young man
quickly disappeared again, and the squirrel was once more left in
undisputed possession.
A week passed. A weary, anxious interval to Don Caesar, who had
neither seen nor heard from Mamie since their last meeting. Too
conscious of his own self-respect to call at the house after the
equivocal conduct of Mrs. Mulrady, and too proud to haunt the lanes and
approaches in the hope of meeting her daughter, like an ordinary lover,
he hid his gloomy thoughts in the monastic shadows of the courtyard at
Los Gatos, or found relief in furious riding at night and early morning
on the highway. Once or twice the up-stage had been overtaken and
passed by a rushing figure as shadowy as a phantom horseman, with only
the star-like point of a cigarette to indicate its humanity. It was in
one of these fierce recreations that he was obliged to stop in early
morning at the blacksmith's shop at Rough-and-Ready, to have a loosened
horseshoe replaced, and while waiting picked up a newspaper. Don
Caesar seldom read the papers, but noticing that this was the "Record,"
he glanced at its columns. A familiar name suddenly flashed out of the
dark type like a spark from the anvil. With a brain and heart that
seemed to be beating in unison with the blacksmith's sledge, he read as
follows:--
"Our distinguished fellow-townsman, Alvin Mulrady, Esq., left town day
before yesterday to attend an important meeting of directors of the Red
Dog Ditch Company, in San Francisco. Society will regret to hear that
Mrs. Mulrady and her beautiful and accomplished daughter, who are
expecting to depart for Europe at the end of the month, anticipated the
event nearly a fortnight, by taking this opportunity of accompanying
Mr. Mulrady as far as San Francisco, on their way to the East. Mrs.
and Miss Mulrady intend to visit London, Paris, and Berlin, and will be
absent three years. It is possible that Mr. Mulrady may join them
later at one or other of those capitals. Considerable disappointment
is felt that a more extended leave-taking was not possible, and that,
under the circumstances, no opportunity was offered for a 'send off'
suitable to the condition of the parties and the esteem in which they
are held in Rough-and-Ready."
The paper dropped from his hands. Gone! and without a word! No, that
was impossible! There must be some mistake; she had written; the
letter had miscarried; she must have sent word to Los Gatos, and the
stupid messenger had blundered; she had probably appointed another
meeting, or expected him to follow to San Francisco. "The day before
yesterday!" It was the morning's paper--she had been gone scarcely two
days--it was not too late yet to receive a delayed message by post, by
some forgetful hand--by--ah--the tree!
Of course it was in the tree, and he had not been there for a week! Why
had he not thought of it before? The fault was his, not hers. Perhaps
she had gone away, believing him faithless, or a country boor.
"In the name of the Devil, will you keep me here till eternity!"
The blacksmith stared at him. Don Caesar suddenly remembered that he
was speaking, as he was thinking--in Spanish.
"Ten dollars, my friend, if you have done in five minutes!"
The man laughed. "That's good enough American," he said, beginning to
quicken his efforts. Don Caesar again took up the paper. There was
another paragraph that recalled his last interview with Mamie:--
"Mr. Harry Slinn, Jr., the editor of this paper, has just moved into
the pioneer house formerly occupied by Alvin Mulrady, Esq., which has
already become historic in the annals of the county. Mr. Slinn brings
with him his father--H. J. Slinn, Esq.,--and his two sisters. Mr.
Slinn, Sen., who has been suffering for many years from complete
paralysis, we understand is slowly improving; and it is by the advice
of his physicians that he has chosen the invigorating air of the
foothills as a change to the debilitating heat of Sacramento."
The affair had been quickly settled, certainly, reflected Don Caesar,
with a slight chill of jealousy, as he thought of Mamie's interest in
the young editor. But the next moment he dismissed it from his mind;
all except a dull consciousness that, if she really loved him--Don
Caesar--as he loved her, she could not have assisted in throwing into
his society the young sisters of the editor, who she expected might be
so attractive.
Within the five minutes the horse was ready, and Don Caesar in the
saddle again. In less than half an hour he was at the wayside boulder.
Here he picketed his horse, and took the narrow foot-trail through the
hollow. It did not take him long to reach their old trysting-place.
With a beating heart he approached the decaying trunk and looked into
the cavity. There was no letter there!
A few blackened nuts and some of the dry moss he had put there were
lying on the ground at its roots. He could not remember whether they
were there when he had last visited the spot. He began to grope in the
cavity with both hands. His fingers struck against the sharp angles of
a flat paper packet: a thrill of joy ran through them and stopped his
beating heart; he drew out the hidden object, and was chilled with
disappointment.
It was an ordinary-sized envelope of yellowish-brown paper, bearing,
besides the usual government stamp, the official legend of an express
company, and showing its age as much by this record of a now obsolete
carrying service as by the discoloration of time and atmosphere. Its
weight, which was heavier than that of any ordinary letter of the same
size and thickness, was evidently due to some loose enclosures, that
slightly rustled and could be felt by the fingers, like minute pieces
of metal or grains of gravel. It was within Don Caesar's experience
that gold specimens were often sent in that manner. It was in a state
of singular preservation, except the address, which, being written in
pencil, was scarcely discernible, and even when deciphered appeared to
be incoherent and unfinished. The unknown correspondent had written
"dear Mary," and then "Mrs. Mary Slinn," with an unintelligible scrawl
following for the direction. If Don Caesar's mind had not been lately
preoccupied with the name of the editor, he would hardly have guessed
the superscription.
In his cruel disappointment and fully aroused indignation, he at once
began to suspect a connection of circumstances which at any other
moment he would have thought purely accidental, or perhaps not have
considered at all. The cavity in the tree had evidently been used as a
secret receptacle for letters before; did Mamie know it at the time,
and how did she know it? The apparent age of the letter made it
preposterous to suppose that it pointed to any secret correspondence of
hers with young Mr. Slinn; and the address was not in her handwriting.
Was there any secret previous intimacy between the families? There was
but one way in which he could connect this letter with Mamie's
faithlessness. It was an infamous, a grotesquely horrible idea, a
thought which sprang as much from his inexperience of the world and his
habitual suspiciousness of all humor as anything else! It was that the
letter was a brutal joke of Slinn's--a joke perhaps concocted by Mamie
and himself--a parting insult that should at the last moment proclaim
their treachery and his own credulity. Doubtless it contained a
declaration of their shame, and the reason why she had fled from him
without a word of explanation. And the enclosure, of course, was some
significant and degrading illustration. Those Americans are full of
those low conceits; it was their national vulgarity.
He had the letter in his angry hand. He could break it open if he
wished and satisfy himself; but it was not addressed to HIM, and the
instinct of honor, strong even in his rage, was the instinct of an
adversary as well. No; Slinn should open the letter before him. Slinn
should explain everything, and answer for it. If it was nothing--a
mere accident--it would lead to some general explanation, and perhaps
even news of Mamie. But he would arraign Slinn, and at once. He put
the letter in his pocket, quickly retraced his steps to his horse, and,
putting spurs to the animal, followed the high road to the gate of
Mulrady's pioneer cabin.
He remembered it well enough. To a cultivated taste, it was superior
to the more pretentious "new house." During the first year of
Mulrady's tenancy, the plain square log-cabin had received those
additions and attractions which only a tenant can conceive and actual
experience suggest; and in this way the hideous right angles were
broken with sheds, "lean-to" extensions, until a certain
picturesqueness was given to the irregularity of outline, and a
home-like security and companionship to the congregated buildings. It
typified the former life of the great capitalist, as the tall new house
illustrated the loneliness and isolation that wealth had given him.
But the real points of vantage were the years of cultivation and
habitation that had warmed and enriched the soil, and evoked the
climbing vines and roses that already hid its unpainted boards, rounded
its hard outlines, and gave projection and shadow from the pitiless
glare of a summer's long sun, or broke the steady beating of the winter
rains. It was true that pea and bean poles surrounded it on one side,
and the only access to the house was through the cabbage rows that once
were the pride and sustenance of the Mulradys. It was this fact, more
than any other, that had impelled Mrs. Mulrady to abandon its site; she
did not like to read the history of their humble origin reflected in
the faces of their visitors as they entered.
Don Caesar tied his horse to the fence, and hurriedly approached the
house. The door, however, hospitably opened when he was a few paces
from it, and when he reached the threshold he found himself
unexpectedly in the presence of two pretty girls. They were evidently
Slinn's sisters, whom he had neither thought of nor included in the
meeting he had prepared. In spite of his preoccupation, he felt
himself suddenly embarrassed, not only by the actual distinction of
their beauty, but by a kind of likeness that they seemed to bear to
Mamie.
"We saw you coming," said the elder, unaffectedly. "You are Don Caesar
Alvarado. My brother has spoken of you."
The words recalled Don Caesar to himself and a sense of courtesy. He
was not here to quarrel with these fair strangers at their first
meeting; he must seek Slinn elsewhere, and at another time. The
frankness of his reception and the allusion to their brother made it
appear impossible that they should be either a party to his
disappointment, or even aware of it. His excitement melted away before
a certain lazy ease, which the consciousness of their beauty seemed to
give them. He was able to put a few courteous inquiries, and, thanks
to the paragraph in the "Record," to congratulate them upon their
father's improvement.
"Oh, pa is a great deal better in his health, and has picked up even in
the last few days, so that he is able to walk round with crutches,"
said the elder sister. "The air here seems to invigorate him
wonderfully."
"And you know, Esther," said the younger, "I think he begins to take
more notice of things, especially when he is out-of-doors. He looks
around on the scenery, and his eye brightens, as if he knew all about
it; and sometimes he knits his brows, and looks down so, as if he was
trying to remember."
"You know, I suppose," exclaimed Esther, "that since his seizure his
memory has been a blank--that is, three or four years of his life seem
to have been dropped out of his recollection."
"It might be a mercy sometimes, Senora," said Don Caesar, with a grave
sigh, as he looked at the delicate features before him, which recalled
the face of the absent Mamie.
"That's not very complimentary," said the younger girl, laughingly;
"for pa didn't recognize us, and only remembered us as little girls."
"Vashti!" interrupted Esther, rebukingly; then, turning to Don Caesar,
she added, "My sister, Vashti, means that father remembers more what
happened before he came to California, when we were quite young, than
he does of the interval that elapsed. Dr. Duchesne says it's a
singular case. He thinks that, with his present progress, he will
recover the perfect use of his limbs; though his memory may never come
back again."
"Unless-- You forget what the doctor told us this morning,"
interrupted Vashti again, briskly.
"I was going to say it," said Esther, a little curtly. "UNLESS he has
another stroke. Then he will either die or recover his mind entirely."
Don Caesar glanced at the bright faces, a trifle heightened in color by
their eager recital and the slight rivalry of narration, and looked
grave. He was a little shocked at a certain lack of sympathy and
tenderness towards their unhappy parent. They seemed to him not only
to have caught that dry, curious toleration of helplessness which
characterizes even relationship in its attendance upon chronic
suffering and weakness, but to have acquired an unconscious habit of
turning it to account. In his present sensitive condition, he even
fancied that they flirted mildly over their parent's infirmity.
"My brother Harry has gone to Red Dog," continued Esther; "he'll be
right sorry to have missed you. Mrs. Mulrady spoke to him about you;
you seem to have been great friends. I s'pose you knew her daughter,
Mamie; I hear she is very pretty."
Although Don Caesar was now satisfied that the Slinns knew nothing of
Mamie's singular behavior to him, he felt embarrassed by this
conversation. "Miss Mulrady is very pretty," he said, with grave
courtesy; "it is a custom of her race. She left suddenly," he added
with affected calmness.
"I reckon she did calculate to stay here longer--so her mother said;
but the whole thing was settled a week ago. I know my brother was
quite surprised to hear from Mr. Mulrady that if we were going to
decide about this house we must do it at once; he had an idea himself
about moving out of the big one into this when they left."
"Mamie Mulrady hadn't much to keep her here, considerin' the money and
the good looks she has, I reckon," said Vashti. "She isn't the sort of
girl to throw herself away in the wilderness, when she can pick and
choose elsewhere. I only wonder she ever come back from Sacramento.
They talk about papa Mulrady having BUSINESS at San Francisco, and THAT
hurrying them off! Depend upon it, that 'business' was Mamie herself.
Her wish is gospel to them. If she'd wanted to stay and have a
farewell party, old Mulrady's business would have been nowhere."
"Ain't you a little rough on Mamie," said Esther, who had been quietly
watching the young man's face with her large languid eyes, "considering
that we don't know her, and haven't even the right of friends to
criticise?"
"I don't call it rough," returned Vashti, frankly, "for I'd do the same
if I were in her shoes--and they're four-and-a-halves, for Harry told
me so. Give me her money and her looks, and you wouldn't catch me
hanging round these diggings--goin' to choir meetings Saturdays, church
Sundays, and buggy-riding once a month--for society! No--Mamie's head
was level--you bet!"
Don Caesar rose hurriedly. They would present his compliments to their
father, and he would endeavor to find their brother at Red Dog. He,
alas! had neither father, mother, nor sister, but if they would receive
his aunt, the Dona Inez Sepulvida, the next Sunday, when she came from
mass, she should be honored and he would be delighted. It required all
his self-possession to deliver himself of this formal courtesy before
he could take his leave, and on the back of his mustang give way to the
rage, disgust and hatred of everything connected with Mamie that filled
his heart. Conscious of his disturbance, but not entirely appreciating
their own share in it, the two girls somewhat wickedly prolonged the
interview by following him into the garden.
"Well, if you MUST leave now," said Esther, at last, languidly, "it
ain't much out of your way to go down through the garden and take a
look at pa as you go. He's somewhere down there, near the woods, and
we don't like to leave him alone too long. You might pass the time of
day with him; see if he's right side up. Vashti and I have got a heap
of things to fix here yet; but if anything's wrong with him, you can
call us. So-long."
Don Caesar was about to excuse himself hurriedly; but that sudden and
acute perception of all kindred sorrow which belongs to refined
suffering, checked his speech. The loneliness of the helpless old man
in this atmosphere of active and youthful selfishness touched him. He
bowed assent, and turned aside into one of the long perspectives of
bean-poles. The girls watched him until out of sight.
"Well," said Vashti, "don't tell ME. But if there wasn't something
between him and that Mamie Mulrady, I don't know a jilted man when I
see him."
"Well, you needn't have let him SEE that you knew it, so that any
civility of ours would look as if we were ready to take up with her
leavings," responded Esther, astutely, as the girls reentered the house.
Meantime, the unconscious object of their criticism walked sadly down
the old market-garden, whose rude outlines and homely details he once
clothed with the poetry of a sensitive man's first love. Well, it was a
common cabbage field and potato patch after all. In his disgust he
felt conscious of even the loss of that sense of patronage and
superiority which had invested his affection for a girl of meaner
condition. His self-respect was humiliated with his love. The soil
and dirt of those wretched cabbages had clung to him, but not to her.
It was she who had gone higher; it was he who was left in the vulgar
ruins of his misplaced passion.
He reached the bottom of the garden without observing any sign of the
lonely invalid. He looked up and down the cabbage rows, and through
the long perspective of pea-vines, without result. There was a newer
trail leading from a gap in the pines to the wooded hollow, which
undoubtedly intersected the little path that he and Mamie had once
followed from the high road. If the old man had taken this trail he
had possibly over-tasked his strength, and there was the more reason
why he should continue his search, and render any assistance if
required. There was another idea that occurred to him, which
eventually decided him to go on. It was that both these trails led to
the decayed sycamore stump, and that the older Slinn might have
something to do with the mysterious letter. Quickening his steps
through the field, he entered the hollow, and reached the intersecting
trail as he expected. To the right it lost itself in the dense woods
in the direction of the ominous stump; to the left it descended in
nearly a straight line to the highway, now plainly visible, as was
equally the boulder on which he had last discovered Mamie sitting with
young Slinn. If he were not mistaken, there was a figure sitting there
now; it was surely a man. And by that half-bowed, helpless attitude,
the object of his search!
It did not take him long to descend the track to the highway and
approach the stranger. He was seated with his hands upon his knees,
gazing in a vague, absorbed fashion upon the hillside, now crowned with
the engine-house and chimney that marked the site of Mulrady's shaft.
He started slightly, and looked up, as Don Caesar paused before him.
The young man was surprised to see that the unfortunate man was not as
old as he had expected, and that his expression was one of quiet and
beatified contentment.
"Your daughters told me you were here," said Don Caesar, with gentle
respect. "I am Caesar Alvarado, your not very far neighbor; very happy
to pay his respects to you as he has to them."
"My daughters?" said the old man, vaguely. "Oh, yes! nice little
girls. And my boy Harry. Did you see Harry? Fine little fellow,
Harry."
"I am glad to hear that you are better," said Don Caesar, hastily, "and
that the air of our country does you no harm. God benefit you, senor,"
he added, with a profoundly reverential gesture, dropping unconsciously
into the religious habit of his youth. "May he protect you, and bring
you back to health and happiness!"
"Happiness?" said Slinn, amazedly. "I am happy--very happy! I have
everything I want: good air, good food, good clothes, pretty little
children, kind friends--" He smiled benignantly at Don Caesar. "God
is very good to me!"
Indeed, he seemed very happy; and his face, albeit crowned with white
hair, unmarked by care and any disturbing impression, had so much of
satisfied youth in it that the grave features of his questioner made
him appear the elder. Nevertheless, Don Caesar noticed that his eyes,
when withdrawn from him, sought the hillside with the same visionary
abstraction.
"It is a fine view, Senor Esslinn," said Don Caesar.
"It is a beautiful view, sir," said Slinn, turning his happy eyes upon
him for a moment, only to rest them again on the green slope opposite.
"Beyond that hill which you are looking at--not far, Senor Esslinn--I
live. You shall come and see me there--you and your family."
"You--you--live there?" stammered the invalid, with a troubled
expression--the first and only change to the complete happiness that
had hitherto suffused his face. "You--and your name is--is Ma--"
"Alvarado," said Don Caesar, gently. "Caesar Alvarado."
"You said Masters," said the old man, with sudden querulousness.
"No, good friend. I said Alvarado," returned Don Caesar, gravely.
"If you didn't say Masters, how could I say it? I don't know any
Masters."
Don Caesar was silent. In another moment the happy tranquillity
returned to Slinn's face; and Don Caesar continued:--
"It is not a long walk over the hill, though it is far by the road.
When you are better you shall try it. Yonder little trail leads to the
top of the hill, and then--"
He stopped, for the invalid's face had again assumed its troubled
expression. Partly to change his thoughts, and partly for some
inexplicable idea that had suddenly seized him, Don Caesar continued:--
"There is a strange old stump near the trail, and in it a hole. In the
hole I found this letter." He stopped again--this time in alarm.
Slinn had staggered to his feet with ashen and distorted features, and
was glancing at the letter which Don Caesar had drawn from his pocket.
The muscles of his throat swelled as if he was swallowing; his lips
moved, but no sound issued from them. At last, with a convulsive
effort, he regained a disjointed speech, in a voice scarcely audible.
"My letter! my letter! It's mine! Give it me! It's my fortune--all
mine! In the tunnel--hill! Masters stole it--stole my fortune! Stole
it all! See, see!"
He seized the letter from Don Caesar with trembling hands, and tore it
open forcibly: a few dull yellow grains fell from it heavily, like
shot, to the ground.
"See, it's true! My letter! My gold! My strike! My--my--my God!"
A tremor passed over his face. The hand that held the letter suddenly
dropped sheer and heavy as the gold had fallen. The whole side of his
face and body nearest Don Caesar seemed to drop and sink into itself as
suddenly. At the same moment, and without a word, he slipped through
Don Caesar's outstretched hands to the ground. Don Caesar bent quickly
over him, but no longer than to satisfy himself that he lived and
breathed, although helpless. He then caught up the fallen letter, and,
glancing over it with flashing eyes, thrust it and the few specimens in
his pocket. He then sprang to his feet, so transformed with energy and
intelligence that he seemed to have added the lost vitality of the man
before him to his own. He glanced quickly up and down the highway.
Every moment to him was precious now; but he could not leave the
stricken man in the dust of the road; nor could he carry him to the
house; nor, having alarmed his daughters, could he abandon his
helplessness to their feeble arms. He remembered that his horse was
still tied to the garden fence. He would fetch it, and carry the
unfortunate man across the saddle to the gate. He lifted him with
difficulty to the boulder, and ran rapidly up the road in the direction
of his tethered steed. He had not proceeded far when he heard the
noise of wheels behind him. It was the up stage coming furiously
along. He would have called to the driver for assistance, but even
through that fast-sweeping cloud of dust and motion he could see that
the man was utterly oblivious of anything but the speed of his rushing
chariot, and had even risen in his box to lash the infuriated and
frightened animals forward.
An hour later, when the coach drew up at the Red Dog Hotel, the driver
descended from the box, white, but taciturn. When he had swallowed a
glass of whiskey at a single gulp, he turned to the astonished express
agent, who had followed him in.
"One of two things, Jim, hez got to happen," he said, huskily. "Either
that there rock hez got to get off the road, or I have. I've seed HIM
on it agin!"
CHAPTER IV
No further particulars of the invalid's second attack were known than
those furnished by Don Caesar's brief statement, that he had found him
lying insensible on the boulder. This seemed perfectly consistent with
the theory of Dr. Duchesne; and as the young Spaniard left Los Gatos
the next day, he escaped not only the active reporter of the "Record,"
but the perusal of a grateful paragraph in the next day's paper
recording his prompt kindness and courtesy. Dr. Duchesne's prognosis,
however, seemed at fault; the elder Slinn did not succumb to this
second stroke, nor did he recover his reason. He apparently only
relapsed into his former physical weakness, losing the little ground he
had gained during the last month, and exhibiting no change in his
mental condition, unless the fact that he remembered nothing of his
seizure and the presence of Don Caesar could be considered as
favorable. Dr. Duchesne's gravity seemed to give that significance to
this symptom, and his cross-questioning of the patient was
characterized by more than his usual curtness.
"You are sure you don't remember walking in the garden before you were
ill?" he said. "Come, think again. You must remember that." The old
man's eyes wandered restlessly around the room, but he answered by a
negative shake of his head. "And you don't remember sitting down on a
stone by the road?"
The old man kept his eyes resolutely fixed on the bedclothes before
him. "No!" he said, with a certain sharp decision that was new to him.
The doctor's eye brightened. "All right, old man; then don't."
On his way out he took the eldest Miss Slinn aside. "He'll do," he
said, grimly: "he's beginning to lie."
"Why, he only said he didn't remember," responded Esther.
"That was because he didn't want to remember," said the doctor,
authoritatively. "The brain is acting on some impression that is
either painful and unpleasant, or so vague that he can't formulate it;
he is conscious of it, and won't attempt it yet. It's a heap better
than his old self-satisfied incoherency."
A few days later, when the fact of Slinn's identification with the
paralytic of three years ago by the stage-driver became generally
known, the doctor came in quite jubilant.
"It's all plain now," he said, decidedly. "That second stroke was
caused by the nervous shock of his coming suddenly upon the very spot
where he had the first one. It proved that his brain still retained
old impressions, but as this first act of his memory was a painful one,
the strain was too great. It was mighty unlucky; but it was a good
sign."
"And you think, then--" hesitated Harry Slinn.
"I think," said Dr. Duchesne, "that this activity still exists, and the
proof of it, as I said before, is that he is trying now to forget it,
and avoid thinking of it. You will find that he will fight shy of any
allusion to it, and will be cunning enough to dodge it every time."
He certainly did. Whether the doctor's hypothesis was fairly based or
not, it was a fact that, when he was first taken out to drive with his
watchful physician, he apparently took no notice of the boulder--which
still remained on the roadside, thanks to the later practical
explanation of the stage-driver's vision--and curtly refused to talk
about it. But, more significant to Duchesne, and perhaps more
perplexing, was a certain morose abstraction, which took the place of
his former vacuity of contentment, and an intolerance of his
attendants, which supplanted his old habitual trustfulness to their
care, that had been varied only by the occasional querulousness of an
invalid. His daughters sometimes found him regarding them with an
attention little short of suspicion, and even his son detected a
half-suppressed aversion in his interviews with him.
Referring this among themselves to his unfortunate malady, his
children, perhaps, justified this estrangement by paying very little
attention to it. They were more pleasantly occupied. The two girls
succeeded to the position held by Mamie Mulrady in the society of the
neighborhood, and divided the attentions of Rough-and-Ready. The young
editor of the "Record" had really achieved, through his supposed
intimacy with the Mulradys, the good fortune he had jestingly
prophesied. The disappearance of Don Caesar was regarded as a virtual
abandonment of the field to his rival: and the general opinion was that
he was engaged to the millionaire's daughter on a certain probation of
work and influence in his prospective father-in-law's interests. He
became successful in one or two speculations, the magic of the lucky
Mulrady's name befriending him. In the superstition of the mining
community, much of this luck was due to his having secured the old
cabin.
"To think," remarked one of the augurs of Red Dog, French Pete, a
polyglot jester, "that while every fool went to taking up claims where
the gold had already been found no one thought of stepping into the old
man's old choux in the cabbage-garden!" Any doubt, however, of the
alliance of the families was dissipated by the intimacy that sprang up
between the elder Slinn and the millionaire, after the latter's return
from San Francisco.
It began in a strange kind of pity for the physical weakness of the
man, which enlisted the sympathies of Mulrady, whose great strength had
never been deteriorated by the luxuries of wealth, and who was still
able to set his workmen an example of hard labor; it was sustained by a
singular and superstitious reverence for his mental condition, which,
to the paternal Mulrady, seemed to possess that spiritual quality with
which popular ignorance invests demented people.
"Then you mean to say that during these three years the vein o' your
mind, so to speak, was a lost lead, and sorter dropped out o' sight or
follerin'?" queried Mulrady, with infinite seriousness.
"Yes," returned Slinn, with less impatience than he usually showed to
questions.
"And durin' that time, when you was dried up and waitin' for rain, I
reckon you kinder had visions?"
A cloud passed over Slinn's face.
"Of course, of course!" said Mulrady, a little frightened at his
tenacity in questioning the oracle. "Nat'rally, this was private, and
not to be talked about. I meant, you had plenty of room for 'em
without crowdin'; you kin tell me some day when you're better, and kin
sorter select what's points and what ain't."
"Perhaps I may some day," said the invalid, gloomily, glancing in the
direction of his preoccupied daughters; "when we're alone."
When his physical strength had improved, and his left arm and side had
regained a feeble but slowly gathering vitality, Alvin Mulrady one day
surprised the family by bringing the convalescent a pile of letters and
accounts, and spreading them on a board before Slinn's invalid chair,
with the suggestion that he should look over, arrange, and docket them.
The idea seemed preposterous, until it was found that the old man was
actually able to perform this service, and exhibited a degree of
intellectual activity and capacity for this kind of work that was
unsuspected. Dr. Duchesne was delighted, and divided with admiration
between his patient's progress and the millionaire's sagacity. "And
there are envious people," said the enthusiastic doctor, "who believe
that a man like him, who could conceive of such a plan for occupying a
weak intellect without taxing its memory or judgment, is merely a lucky
fool! Look here. May be it didn't require much brains to stumble on a
gold mine, and it is a gift of Providence. But, in my experience,
Providence don't go round buyin' up d--d fools, or investin' in dead
beats."
When Mr. Slinn, finally, with the aid of crutches, was able to hobble
every day to the imposing counting-house and the office of Mr. Mulrady,
which now occupied the lower part of the new house, and contained some
of its gorgeous furniture, he was installed at a rosewood desk behind
Mr. Mulrady's chair, as his confidential clerk and private secretary.
The astonishment of Red Dog and Rough-and-Ready at this singular
innovation knew no bounds; but the boldness and novelty of the idea
carried everything before it. Judge Butts, the oracle of
Rough-and-Ready, delivered its decision: "He's got a man who's
physically incapable of running off with his money, and has no memory
to run off with his ideas. How could he do better?" Even his own son,
Harry, coming upon his father thus installed, was for a moment struck
with a certain filial respect, and for a day or two patronized him.
In this capacity Slinn became the confidant not only of Mulrady's
business secrets, but of his domestic affairs. He knew that young
Mulrady, from a freckle-faced slow country boy, had developed into a
freckle-faced fast city man, with coarse habits of drink and gambling.
It was through the old man's hands that extravagant bills and shameful
claims passed on their way to be cashed by Mulrady; it was he that at
last laid before the father one day his signature perfectly forged by
the son.
"Your eyes are not ez good ez mine, you know, Slinn," said Mulrady,
gravely. "It's all right. I sometimes make my Y's like that. I'd
clean forgot to cash that check. You must not think you've got the
monopoly of disremembering," he added, with a faint laugh.
Equally through Slinn's hands passed the record of the lavish
expenditure of Mrs. Mulrady and the fair Mamie, as well as the
chronicle of their movements and fashionable triumphs. As Mulrady had
already noticed that Slinn had no confidence with his own family, he
did not try to withhold from them these domestic details, possibly as
an offset to the dreary catalogue of his son's misdeeds, but more often
in the hope of gaining from the taciturn old man some comment that
might satisfy his innocent vanity as father and husband, and perhaps
dissipate some doubts that were haunting him.
"Twelve hundred dollars looks to be a good figger for a dress, ain't
it? But Malviny knows, I reckon, what ought to be worn at the
Tooilleries, and she don't want our Mamie to take a back seat before
them furrin' princesses and gran' dukes. It's a slap-up affair, I
kalkilate. Let's see. I disremember whether it's an emperor or a king
that's rulin' over thar now. It must be suthin' first class and A1,
for Malviny ain't the woman to throw away twelve hundred dollars on any
of them small-potato despots! She says Mamie speaks French already
like them French Petes. I don't quite make out what she means here.
She met Don Caesar in Paris, and she says, 'I think Mamie is nearly off
with Don Caesar, who has followed her here. I don't care about her
dropping him TOO suddenly; the reason I'll tell you hereafter. I think
the man might be a dangerous enemy.' Now, what do you make of this? I
allus thought Mamie rather cottoned to him, and it was the old woman
who fought shy, thinkin' Mamie would do better. Now, I am agreeable
that my gal should marry any one she likes, whether it's a dook or a
poor man, as long as he's on the square. I was ready to take Don
Caesar; but now things seem to have shifted round. As to Don Caesar's
being a dangerous enemy if Mamie won't have him, that's a little too
high and mighty for me, and I wonder the old woman don't make him climb
down. What do you think?"
"Who is Don Caesar?" asked Slinn.
"The man what picked you up that day. I mean," continued Mulrady,
seeing the marks of evident ignorance on the old man's face,--"I mean a
sort of grave, genteel chap, suthin' between a parson and a
circus-rider. You might have seen him round the house talkin' to your
gals."
But Slinn's entire forgetfulness of Don Caesar was evidently unfeigned.
Whatever sudden accession of memory he had at the time of his attack,
the incident that caused it had no part in his recollection. With the
exception of these rare intervals of domestic confidences with his
crippled private secretary, Mulrady gave himself up to money-getting.
Without any especial faculty for it--an easy prey often to unscrupulous
financiers--his unfailing luck, however, carried him safely through,
until his very mistakes seemed to be simply insignificant means to a
large significant end and a part of his original plan. He sank another
shaft, at a great expense, with a view to following the lead he had
formerly found, against the opinions of the best mining engineers, and
struck the artesian spring he did NOT find at that time, with a volume
of water that enabled him not only to work his own mine, but to furnish
supplies to his less fortunate neighbors at a vast profit. A league of
tangled forest and canyon behind Rough-and-Ready, for which he had paid
Don Ramon's heirs an extravagant price in the presumption that it was
auriferous, furnished the most accessible timber to build the town, at
prices which amply remunerated him. The practical schemes of
experienced men, the wildest visions of daring dreams delayed or
abortive for want of capital, eventually fell into his hands. Men
sneered at his methods, but bought his shares. Some who affected to
regard him simply as a man of money were content to get only his name
to any enterprise. Courted by his superiors, quoted by his equals, and
admired by his inferiors, he bore his elevation equally without
ostentation or dignity. Bidden to banquets, and forced by his position
as director or president into the usual gastronomic feats of that
civilization and period, he partook of simple food, and continued his
old habit of taking a cup of coffee with milk and sugar at dinner.
Without professing temperance, he drank sparingly in a community where
alcoholic stimulation was a custom. With neither refinement nor an
extended vocabulary, he was seldom profane, and never indelicate. With
nothing of the Puritan in his manner or conversation, he seemed to be
as strange to the vices of civilization as he was to its virtues. That
such a man should offer little to and receive little from the
companionship of women of any kind was a foregone conclusion. Without
the dignity of solitude, he was pathetically alone.
Meantime, the days passed; the first six months of his opulence were
drawing to a close, and in that interval he had more than doubled the
amount of his discovered fortune. The rainy season set in early.
Although it dissipated the clouds of dust under which Nature and Art
seemed to be slowly disappearing, it brought little beauty to the
landscape at first, and only appeared to lay bare the crudenesses of
civilization. The unpainted wooden buildings of Rough-and-Ready,
soaked and dripping with rain, took upon themselves a sleek and shining
ugliness, as of second-hand garments; the absence of cornices or
projections to break the monotony of the long straight lines of
downpour made the town appear as if it had been recently submerged,
every vestige of ornamentation swept away, and only the bare outlines
left. Mud was everywhere; the outer soil seemed to have risen and
invaded the houses even to their most secret recesses, as if outraged
Nature was trying to revenge herself. Mud was brought into the saloons
and barrooms and express offices, on boots, on clothes, on baggage, and
sometimes appeared mysteriously in splashes of red color on the walls,
without visible conveyance. The dust of six months, closely packed in
cornice and carving, yielded under the steady rain a thin yellow paint,
that dropped on wayfarers or unexpectedly oozed out of ceilings and
walls on the wretched inhabitants within. The outskirts of
Rough-and-Ready and the dried hills round Los Gatos did not appear to
fare much better; the new vegetation had not yet made much headway
against the dead grasses of the summer; the pines in the hollow wept
lugubriously into a small rivulet that had sprung suddenly into life
near the old trail; everywhere was the sound of dropping, splashing,
gurgling, or rushing waters.
More hideous than ever, the new Mulrady house lifted itself against the
leaden sky, and stared with all its large-framed, shutterless windows
blankly on the prospect, until they seemed to the wayfarer to become
mere mirrors set in the walls, reflecting only the watery landscape,
and unable to give the least indication of light or heat within.
Nevertheless, there was a fire in Mulrady's private office that
December afternoon, of a smoky, intermittent variety, that sufficed
more to record the defects of hasty architecture than to comfort the
millionaire and his private secretary, who had lingered after the early
withdrawal of the clerks. For the next day was Christmas, and, out of
deference to the near approach of this festivity, a half-holiday had
been given to the employees. "They'll want, some of them, to spend
their money before to-morrow; and others would like to be able to rise
up comfortably drunk Christmas morning," the superintendent had
suggested. Mr. Mulrady had just signed a number of checks indicating
his largess to those devoted adherents with the same unostentatious,
undemonstrative, matter-of-fact manner that distinguished his ordinary
business. The men had received it with something of the same manner. A
half-humorous "Thank you, sir"--as if to show that, with their patron,
they tolerated this deference to a popular custom, but were a little
ashamed of giving way to it--expressed their gratitude and their
independence.
"I reckon that the old lady and Mamie are having a high old time in
some of them gilded pallises in St. Petersburg or Berlin about this
time. Them diamonds that I ordered at Tiffany ought to have reached
'em about now, so that Mamie could cut a swell at Christmas with her
war-paint. I suppose it's the style to give presents in furrin'
countries ez it is here, and I allowed to the old lady that whatever
she orders in that way she is to do in Californy style--no
dollar-jewelry and galvanized-watches business. If she wants to make a
present to any of them nobles ez has been purlite to her, it's got to
be something that Rough-and-Ready ain't ashamed of. I showed you that
pin Mamie bought me in Paris, didn't I? It's just come for my
Christmas present. No! I reckon I put it in the safe, for them kind
o' things don't suit my style: but s'pose I orter sport it to-morrow.
It was mighty thoughtful in Mamie, and it must cost a lump; it's got no
slouch of a pearl in it. I wonder what Mamie gave for it?"
"You can easily tell; the bill is here. You paid it yesterday," said
Slinn. There was no satire in the man's voice, nor was there the least
perception of irony in Mulrady's manner, as he returned quietly,--
"That's so; it was suthin' like a thousand francs; but French money,
when you pan it out as dollars and cents, don't make so much, after
all." There was a few moments' silence, when he continued, in the same
tone of voice, "Talkin' o' them things, Slinn, I've got suthin' for
you." He stopped suddenly. Ever watchful of any undue excitement in
the invalid, he had noticed a slight flush of disturbance pass over his
face, and continued carelessly, "But we'll talk it over to-morrow; a
day or two don't make much difference to you and me in such things, you
know. P'raps I'll drop in and see you. We'll be shut up here."
"Then you're going out somewhere?" asked Slinn, mechanically.
"No," said Mulrady, hesitatingly. It had suddenly occurred to him that
he had nowhere to go if he wanted to, and he continued, half in
explanation, "I ain't reckoned much on Christmas, myself. Abner's at
the Springs; it wouldn't pay him to come here for a day--even if there
was anybody here he cared to see. I reckon I'll hang round the shanty,
and look after things generally. I haven't been over the house
upstairs to put things to rights since the folks left. But YOU needn't
come here, you know."
He helped the old man to rise, assisted him in putting on his overcoat,
and than handed him the cane which had lately replaced his crutches.
"Good-by, old man! You musn't trouble yourself to say 'Merry
Christmas' now, but wait until you see me again. Take care of
yourself."
He slapped him lightly on the shoulder, and went back into his private
office. He worked for some time at his desk, and then laid his pen
aside, put away his papers methodically, placing a large envelope on
his private secretary's vacant table. He then opened the office door
and ascended the staircase. He stopped on the first landing to listen
to the sound of rain on the glass skylight, that seemed to echo through
the empty hall like the gloomy roll of a drum. It was evident that the
searching water had found out the secret sins of the house's
construction, for there were great fissures of discoloration in the
white and gold paper in the corners of the wall. There was a strange
odor of the dank forest in the mirrored drawing-room, as if the rain
had brought out the sap again from the unseasoned timbers; the blue and
white satin furniture looked cold, and the marble mantels and centre
tables had taken upon themselves the clamminess of tombstones. Mr.
Mulrady, who had always retained his old farmer-like habit of taking
off his coat with his hat on entering his own house, and appearing in
his shirt-sleeves, to indicate domestic ease and security, was obliged
to replace it, on account of the chill. He had never felt at home in
this room. Its strangeness had lately been heightened by Mrs.
Mulrady's purchase of a family portrait of some one she didn't know,
but who, she had alleged, resembled her "Uncle Bob," which hung on the
wall beside some paintings in massive frames. Mr. Mulrady cast a
hurried glance at the portrait that, on the strength of a high
coat-collar and high top curl--both rolled with equal precision and
singular sameness of color--had always glared at Mulrady as if HE was
the intruder; and, passing through his wife's gorgeous bedroom, entered
the little dressing-room, where he still slept on the smallest of cots,
with hastily improvised surroundings, as if he was a bailiff in
"possession." He didn't linger here long, but, taking a key from a
drawer, continued up the staircase, to the ominous funeral marches of
the beating rain on the skylight, and paused on the landing to glance
into his son's and daughter's bedrooms, duplicates of the bizarre
extravagance below. If he were seeking some characteristic traces of
his absent family, they certainly were not here in the painted and
still damp blazoning of their later successes. He ascended another
staircase, and, passing to the wing of the house, paused before a small
door, which was locked. Already the ostentatious decorations of wall
and passages were left behind, and the plain lath-and-plaster partition
of the attic lay before him. He unlocked the door, and threw it open.
CHAPTER V
The apartment he entered was really only a lumber-room or loft over the
wing of the house, which had been left bare and unfinished, and which
revealed in its meagre skeleton of beams and joints the hollow sham of
the whole structure. But in more violent contrast to the fresher
glories of the other part of the house were its contents, which were
the heterogeneous collection of old furniture, old luggage, and
cast-off clothing, left over from the past life in the old cabin. It
was a much plainer record of the simple beginnings of the family than
Mrs. Mulrady cared to have remain in evidence, and for that reason it
had been relegated to the hidden recesses of the new house, in the hope
that it might absorb or digest it. There were old cribs, in which the
infant limbs of Mamie and Abner had been tucked up; old
looking-glasses, that had reflected their shining, soapy faces, and
Mamie's best chip Sunday hat; an old sewing-machine, that had been worn
out in active service; old patchwork quilts; an old accordion, to whose
long drawn inspirations Mamie had sung hymns; old pictures, books, and
old toys. There were one or two old chromos, and, stuck in an old
frame, a colored print from the "Illustrated London News" of a
Christmas gathering in an old English country house. He stopped and
picked up this print, which he had often seen before, gazing at it with
a new and singular interest. He wondered if Mamie had seen anything of
this kind in England, and why couldn't he have had something like it
here, in their own fine house, with themselves and a few friends? He
remembered a past Christmas, when he had bought Mamie that now headless
doll with the few coins that were left him after buying their frugal
Christmas dinner. There was an old spotted hobby-horse that another
Christmas had brought to Abner--Abner, who would be driving a fast
trotter to-morrow at the Springs! How everything had changed! How
they all had got up in the world, and how far beyond this kind of
thing--and yet--yet it would have been rather comfortable to have all
been together again here. Would THEY have been more comfortable? No!
Yet then he might have had something to do, and been less lonely
to-morrow. What of that? He HAD something to do: to look after this
immense fortune. What more could a man want, or should he want? It
was rather mean in him, able to give his wife and children everything
they wanted, to be wanting anything more. He laid down the print
gently, after dusting its glass and frame with his silk handkerchief,
and slowly left the room.
The drum-beat of the rain followed him down the staircase, but he shut
it out with his other thoughts, when he again closed the door of his
office. He set diligently to work by the declining winter light, until
he was interrupted by the entrance of his Chinese waiter to tell him
that supper--which was the meal that Mulrady religiously adhered to in
place of the late dinner of civilization--was ready in the dining-room.
Mulrady mechanically obeyed the summons; but on entering the room the
oasis of a few plates in a desert of white table-cloth which awaited
him made him hesitate. In its best aspect, the high dark Gothic
mahogany ecclesiastical sideboard and chairs of this room, which looked
like the appointments of a mortuary chapel, were not exhilarating; and
to-day, in the light of the rain-filmed windows and the feeble rays of
a lamp half-obscured by the dark shining walls, it was most depressing.
"You kin take up supper into my office," said Mulrady, with a sudden
inspiration. "I'll eat it there."
He ate it there, with his usual healthy appetite, which did not require
even the stimulation of company. He had just finished, when his Irish
cook--the one female servant of the house--came to ask permission to be
absent that evening and the next day.
"I suppose the likes of your honor won't be at home on the Christmas
Day? And it's me cousins from the old counthry at Rough-and-Ready that
are invitin' me."
"Why don't you ask them over here?" said Mulrady, with another vague
inspiration. "I'll stand treat."
"Lord preserve you for a jinerous gintleman! But it's the likes of
them and myself that wouldn't be at home here on such a day."
There was so much truth in this that Mulrady checked a sigh as he gave
the required permission, without saying that he had intended to remain.
He could cook his own breakfast: he had done it before; and it would be
something to occupy him. As to his dinner, perhaps he could go to the
hotel at Rough-and-Ready. He worked on until the night had well
advanced. Then, overcome with a certain restlessness that disturbed
him, he was forced to put his books and papers away. It had begun to
blow in fitful gusts, and occasionally the rain was driven softly
across the panes like the passing of childish fingers. This disturbed
him more than the monotony of silence, for he was not a nervous man.
He seldom read a book, and the county paper furnished him only the
financial and mercantile news which was part of his business. He knew
he could not sleep if he went to bed. At last he rose, opened the
window, and looked out from pure idleness of occupation. A splash of
wheels in the distant muddy road and fragments of a drunken song showed
signs of an early wandering reveller. There were no lights to be seen
at the closed works; a profound darkness encompassed the house, as if
the distant pines in the hollow had moved up and round it. The silence
was broken now only by the occasional sighing of wind and rain. It was
not an inviting night for a perfunctory walk; but an idea struck
him--he would call upon the Slinns, and anticipate his next day's
visit! They would probably have company, and be glad to see him: he
could tell the girls of Mamie and her success. That he had not thought
of this before was a proof of his usual self-contained isolation, that
he thought of it now was an equal proof that he was becoming at last
accessible to loneliness. He was angry with himself for what seemed to
him a selfish weakness.
He returned to his office, and, putting the envelope that had been
lying on Slinn's desk in his pocket, threw a serape over his shoulders,
and locked the front door of the house behind him. It was well that
the way was a familiar one to him, and that his feet instinctively
found the trail, for the night was very dark. At times he was warned
only by the gurgling of water of little rivulets that descended the
hill and crossed his path. Without the slightest fear, and with
neither imagination nor sensitiveness, he recalled how, the winter
before, one of Don Caesar's vaqueros, crossing this hill at night, had
fallen down the chasm of a landslip caused by the rain, and was found
the next morning with his neck broken in the gully. Don Caesar had to
take care of the man's family. Suppose such an accident should happen
to him? Well, he had made his will. His wife and children would be
provided for, and the work of the mine would go on all the same; he had
arranged for that. Would anybody miss him? Would his wife, or his
son, or his daughter? No. He felt such a sudden and overwhelming
conviction of the truth of this that he stopped as suddenly as if the
chasm had opened before him. No! It was the truth. If he were to
disappear forever in the darkness of the Christmas night there was none
to feel his loss. His wife would take care of Mamie; his son would
take care of himself, as he had before--relieved of even the scant
paternal authority he rebelled against. A more imaginative man than
Mulrady would have combated or have followed out this idea, and then
dismissed it; to the millionaire's matter-of-fact mind it was a
deduction that, having once presented itself to his perception, was
already a recognized fact. For the first time in his life he felt a
sudden instinct of something like aversion towards his family, a
feeling that even his son's dissipation and criminality had never
provoked. He hurried on angrily through the darkness.
It was very strange; the old house should be almost before him now,
across the hollow, yet there were no indications of light! It was not
until he actually reached the garden fence, and the black bulk of
shadow rose out against the sky, that he saw a faint ray of light from
one of the lean-to windows. He went to the front door and knocked.
After waiting in vain for a reply, he knocked again. The second knock
proving equally futile, he tried the door; it was unlocked, and,
pushing it open, he walked in. The narrow passage was quite dark, but
from his knowledge of the house he knew the "lean-to" was next to the
kitchen, and, passing through the dining-room into it, he opened the
door of the little room from which the light proceeded. It came from a
single candle on a small table, and beside it, with his eyes moodily
fixed on the dying embers of the fire, sat old Slinn. There was no
other light nor another human being in the whole house.
For the instant Mulrady, forgetting his own feelings in the mute
picture of the utter desolation of the helpless man, remained
speechless on the threshold. Then, recalling himself, he stepped
forward and laid his hand gayly on the bowed shoulders.
"Rouse up out o' this, old man! Come! this won't do. Look! I've run
over here in the rain, jist to have a sociable time with you all."
"I knew it," said the old man, without looking up; "I knew you'd come."
"You knew I'd come?" echoed Mulrady, with an uneasy return of the
strange feeling of awe with which he regarded Slinn's abstraction.
"Yes; you were alone--like myself--all alone!"
"Then, why in thunder didn't you open the door or sing out just now?"
he said, with an affected brusquerie to cover his uneasiness. "Where's
your daughters?"
"Gone to Rough-and-Ready to a party."
"And your son?"
"He never comes here when he can amuse himself elsewhere."
"Your children might have stayed home on Christmas Eve."
"So might yours."
He didn't say this impatiently, but with a certain abstracted
conviction far beyond any suggestion of its being a retort. Mulrady did
not appear to notice it.
"Well, I don't see why us old folks can't enjoy ourselves without
them," said Mulrady, with affected cheerfulness. "Let's have a good
time, you and me. Let's see--you haven't any one you can send to my
house, hev you?"
"They took the servant with them," said Slinn, briefly. "There is no
one here."
"All right," said the millionaire, briskly. "I'll go myself. Do you
think you can manage to light up a little more, and build a fire in the
kitchen while I'm gone? It used to be mighty comfortable in the old
times."
He helped the old man to rise from his chair, and seemed to have
infused into him some of his own energy. He then added, "Now, don't
you get yourself down again into that chair until I come back," and
darted out into the night once more.
In a quarter of an hour he returned with a bag on his broad shoulders,
which one of his porters would have shrunk from lifting, and laid it
before the blazing hearth of the now lighted kitchen. "It's something
the old woman got for her party, that didn't come off," he said,
apologetically. "I reckon we can pick out enough for a spread. That
darned Chinaman wouldn't come with me," he added, with a laugh,
"because, he said, he'd knocked off work 'allee same, Mellican man!'
Look here, Slinn," he said, with a sudden decisiveness, "my pay-roll of
the men around here don't run short of a hundred and fifty dollars a
day, and yet I couldn't get a hand to help me bring this truck over for
my Christmas dinner."
"Of course," said Slinn, gloomily.
"Of course; so it oughter be," returned Mulrady, shortly. "Why, it's
only their one day out of 364; and I can have 363 days off, as I am
their boss. I don't mind a man's being independent," he continued,
taking off his coat and beginning to unpack his sack--a common "gunny
bag"--used for potatoes. "We're independent ourselves, ain't we,
Slinn?"
His good spirits, which had been at first labored and affected, had
become natural. Slinn, looking at his brightened eye and fresher
color, could not help thinking he was more like his own real self at
this moment than in his counting-house and offices--with all his
simplicity as a capitalist. A less abstracted and more observant
critic than Slinn would have seen in this patient aptitude for real
work, and the recognition of the force of petty detail, the dominance
of the old market-gardener in his former humble, as well as his later
more ambitious, successes.
"Heaven keep us from being dependent upon our children!" said Slinn,
darkly.
"Let the young ones alone to-night; we can get along without them, as
they can without us," said Mulrady, with a slight twinge as he thought
of his reflections on the hillside. "But look here, there's some
champagne and them sweet cordials that women like; there's jellies and
such like stuff, about as good as they make 'em, I reckon; and
preserves, and tongues, and spiced beef--take your pick! Stop, let's
spread them out." He dragged the table to the middle of the floor, and
piled the provisions upon it. They certainly were not deficient in
quality or quantity. "Now, Slinn, wade in."
"I don't feel hungry," said the invalid, who had lapsed again into a
chair before the fire.
"No more do I," said Mulrady; "but I reckon it's the right thing to do
about this time. Some folks think they can't be happy without they're
getting outside o' suthin', and my directors down at 'Frisco can't do
any business without a dinner. Take some champagne, to begin with."
He opened a bottle, and filled two tumblers. "It's past twelve
o'clock, old man, so here's a merry Christmas to you, and both of us ez
is here. And here's another to our families--ez isn't."
They both drank their wine stolidly. The rain beat against the windows
sharply, but without the hollow echoes of the house on the hill. "I
must write to the old woman and Mamie, and say that you and me had a
high old time on Christmas Eve."
"By ourselves," added the invalid.
Mr. Mulrady coughed. "Nat'rally--by ourselves. And her provisions,"
he added, with a laugh. "We're really beholden to HER for 'em. If she
hadn't thought of having them--"
"For somebody else, you wouldn't have had them--would you?" said Slinn,
slowly, gazing at the fire.
"No," said Mulrady, dubiously. After a pause he began more
vivaciously, and as if to shake off some disagreeable thought that was
impressing him, "But I mustn't forget to give you YOUR Christmas, old
man, and I've got it right here with me." He took the folded envelope
from his pocket, and, holding it in his hand with his elbow on the
table, continued, "I don't mind telling you what idea I had in giving
you what I'm goin' to give you now. I've been thinking about it for a
day or two. A man like you don't want money--you wouldn't spend it. A
man like you don't want stocks or fancy investments, for you couldn't
look after them. A man like you don't want diamonds and jewellery, nor
a gold-headed cane, when it's got to be used as a crutch. No, sir.
What you want is suthin' that won't run away from you; that is always
there before you and won't wear out, and will last after you're gone.
That's land! And if it wasn't that I have sworn never to sell or give
away this house and that garden, if it wasn't that I've held out agin
the old woman and Mamie on that point, you should have THIS house and
THAT garden. But, mebbee, for the same reason that I've told you, I
want that land to keep for myself. But I've selected four acres of the
hill this side of my shaft, and here's the deed of it. As soon as
you're ready, I'll put you up a house as big as this--that shall be
yours, with the land, as long as you live, old man; and after that your
children's."
"No; not theirs!" broke in the old man, passionately. "Never!"
Mulrady recoiled for an instant in alarm at the sudden and unexpected
vehemence of his manner, "Go slow, old man; go slow," he said,
soothingly. "Of course, you'll do with your own as you like." Then,
as if changing the subject, he went on cheerfully: "Perhaps you'll
wonder why I picked out that spot on the hillside. Well, first, because
I reserved it after my strike in case the lead should run that way, but
it didn't. Next, because when you first came here you seemed to like
the prospect. You used to sit there looking at it, as if it reminded
you of something. You never said it did. They say you was sitting on
that boulder there when you had that last attack, you know; but," he
added, gently, "you've forgotten all about it."
"I have forgotten nothing," said Slinn, rising, with a choking voice.
"I wish to God I had; I wish to God I could!"
He was on his feet now, supporting himself by the table. The subtle
generous liquor he had drunk had evidently shaken his self-control, and
burst those voluntary bonds he had put upon himself for the last six
months; the insidious stimulant had also put a strange vigor into his
blood and nerves. His face was flushed, but not distorted; his eyes
were brilliant, but not fixed; he looked as he might have looked to
Masters in his strength three years before on that very hillside.
"Listen to me, Alvin Mulrady," he said, leaning over him with burning
eyes. "Listen, while I have brain to think and strength to utter, why
I have learnt to distrust, fear, and hate them! You think you know my
story. Well, hear the truth from ME to-night, Alvin Mulrady, and do
not wonder if I have cause."
He stopped, and, with pathetic inefficiency, passed the fingers and
inward-turned thumb of his paralyzed hand across his mouth, as if to
calm himself. "Three years ago I was a miner, but not a miner like
you! I had experience, I had scientific knowledge, I had a theory, and
the patience and energy to carry it out. I selected a spot that had
all the indications, made a tunnel, and, without aid, counsel or
assistance of any kind, worked it for six months, without rest or
cessation, and with scarcely food enough to sustain my body. Well, I
made a strike; not like you, Mulrady, not a blunder of good luck, a
fool's fortune--there, I don't blame you for it--but in perfect
demonstration of my theory, the reward of my labor. It was no pocket,
but a vein, a lead, that I had regularly hunted down and found--a
fortune!
"I never knew how hard I had worked until that morning; I never knew
what privations I had undergone until that moment of my success, when I
found I could scarcely think or move! I staggered out into the open
air. The only human soul near me was a disappointed prospector, a man
named Masters, who had a tunnel not far away. I managed to conceal
from him my good fortune and my feeble state, for I was suspicious of
him--of any one; and as he was going away that day I thought I could
keep my secret until he was gone. I was dizzy and confused, but I
remember that I managed to write a letter to my wife, telling her of my
good fortune, and begging her to come to me; and I remember that I saw
Masters go. I don't remember anything else. They picked me up on the
road, near that boulder, as you know."
"I know," said Mulrady, with a swift recollection of the stage-driver's
account of his discovery.
"They say," continued Slinn, tremblingly, "that I never recovered my
senses or consciousness for nearly three years; they say I lost my
memory completely during my illness, and that by God's mercy, while I
lay in that hospital, I knew no more than a babe; they say, because I
could not speak or move, and only had my food as nature required it,
that I was an imbecile, and that I never really came to my senses until
after my son found me in the hospital. They SAY that--but I tell you
to-night, Alvin Mulrady," he said, raising his voice to a hoarse
outcry, "I tell you that it is a lie! I came to my senses a week after
I lay on that hospital cot; I kept my senses and memory ever after
during the three years that I was there, until Harry brought his cold,
hypocritical face to my bedside and recognized me. Do you understand?
I, the possessor of millions, lay there a pauper. Deserted by wife and
children--a spectacle for the curious, a sport for the doctors--AND I
KNEW IT! I heard them speculate on the cause of my helplessness. I
heard them talk of excesses and indulgences--I, that never knew wine or
woman! I heard a preacher speak of the finger of God, and point to me.
May God curse him!"
"Go slow, old man; go slow," said Mulrady, gently.
"I heard them speak of me as a friendless man, an outcast, a
criminal--a being whom no one would claim. They were right; no one
claimed me. The friends of others visited them; relations came and
took away their kindred; a few lucky ones got well; a few, equally
lucky, died! I alone lived on, uncared for, deserted.
"The first year," he went on more rapidly, "I prayed for their coming.
I looked for them every day. I never lost hope. I said to myself,
'She has not got my letter; but when the time passes she will be
alarmed by my silence, and then she will come or send some one to seek
me.' A young student got interested in my case, and, by studying my
eyes, thought that I was not entirely imbecile and unconscious. With
the aid of an alphabet, he got me to spell my name and town in
Illinois, and promised by signs to write to my family. But in an evil
moment I told him of my cursed fortune, and in that moment I saw that
he thought me a fool and an idiot. He went away, and I saw him no
more. Yet I still hoped. I dreamed of their joy at finding me, and
the reward that my wealth would give them. Perhaps I was a little weak
still, perhaps a little flighty, too, at times; but I was quite happy
that year, even in my disappointment, for I had still hope!"
He paused, and again composed his face with his paralyzed hand; but his
manner had become less excited, and his voice was stronger.
"A change must have come over me the second year, for I only dreaded
their coming now and finding me so altered. A horrible idea that they
might, like the student, believe me crazy if I spoke of my fortune made
me pray to God that they might not reach me until after I had regained
my health and strength--and found my fortune. When the third year
found me still there--I no longer prayed for them--I cursed them! I
swore to myself that they should never enjoy my wealth; but I wanted to
live, and let them know I had it. I found myself getting stronger; but
as I had no money, no friends, and nowhere to go, I concealed my real
condition from the doctors, except to give them my name, and to try to
get some little work to do to enable me to leave the hospital and seek
my lost treasure. One day I found out by accident that it had been
discovered! You understand--my treasure!--that had cost me years of
labor and my reason; had left me a helpless, forgotten pauper. That
gold I had never enjoyed had been found and taken possession of by
another!"
He checked an exclamation from Mulrady with his hand. "They say they
picked me up senseless from the floor, where I must have fallen when I
heard the news--I don't remember--I recall nothing until I was
confronted, nearly three weeks after, by my son, who had called at the
hospital, as a reporter for a paper, and had accidentally discovered me
through my name and appearance. He thought me crazy, or a fool. I
didn't undeceive him. I did not tell him the story of the mine to
excite his doubts and derision, or, worse (if I could bring proof to
claim it), have it perhaps pass into his ungrateful hands. No; I said
nothing. I let him bring me here. He could do no less, and common
decency obliged him to do that."
"And what proof could you show of your claim?" asked Mulrady, gravely.
"If I had that letter--if I could find Masters," began Slinn, vaguely.
"Have you any idea where the letter is, or what has become of Masters?"
continued Mulrady, with a matter-of-fact gravity, that seemed to
increase Slinn's vagueness and excite his irritability.
"I don't know--I sometimes think--" He stopped, sat down again, and
passed his hands across his forehead. "I have seen the letter
somewhere since. Yes," he went on, with sudden vehemence, "I know it,
I have seen it! I--" His brows knitted, his features began to work
convulsively; he suddenly brought his paralyzed hand down, partly
opened, upon the table. "I WILL remember where."
"Go slow, old man; go slow."
"You asked me once about my visions. Well, that is one of them. I
remember a man somewhere showing me that letter. I have taken it from
his hands and opened it, and knew it was mine by the specimens of gold
that were in it. But where--or when--or what became of it, I cannot
tell. It will come to me--it MUST come to me soon."
He turned his eyes upon Mulrady, who was regarding him with an
expression of grave curiosity, and said bitterly, "You think me crazy.
I know it. It needed only this."
"Where is this mine," asked Mulrady, without heeding him.
The old man's eyes swiftly sought the ground.
"It is a secret, then?"
"No."
"You have spoken of it to any one?"
"No."
"Not to the man who possesses it?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I wouldn't take it from him."
"Why wouldn't you?"
"Because that man is yourself!"
In the instant of complete silence that followed they could hear that
the monotonous patter of rain on the roof had ceased.
"Then all this was in MY shaft, and the vein I thought I struck there
was YOUR lead, found three years ago in YOUR tunnel. Is that your
idea?"
"Yes."
"Then I don't sabe why you don't want to claim it."
"I have told you why I don't want it for my children. I go further,
now, and I tell you, Alvin Mulrady, that I was willing that your
children should squander it, as they were doing. It has only been a
curse to me; it could only be a curse to them; but I thought you were
happy in seeing it feed selfishness and vanity. You think me bitter and
hard. Well, I should have left you in your fool's paradise, but that I
saw to-night, when you came here, that your eyes had been opened like
mine. You, the possessor of my wealth, my treasure, could not buy your
children's loving care and company with your millions, any more than I
could keep mine in my poverty. You were to-night lonely and forsaken,
as I was. We were equal, for the first time in our lives. If that
cursed gold had dropped down the shaft between us into the hell from
which it sprang, we might have clasped hands like brothers across the
chasm."
Mulrady, who in a friendly show of being at his ease had not yet
resumed his coat, rose in his shirt-sleeves, and, standing before the
hearth, straightened his square figure by drawing down his waistcoat on
each side with two powerful thumbs. After a moment's contemplative
survey of the floor between him and the speaker, he raised his eyes to
Slinn. They were small and colorless; the forehead above them was low,
and crowned with a shock of tawny reddish hair; even the rude strength
of his lower features was enfeebled by a long, straggling, goat-like
beard; but for the first time in his life the whole face was impressed
and transformed with a strong and simple dignity.
"Ez far ez I kin see, Slinn," he said, gravely, "the pint between you
and me ain't to be settled by our children, or wot we allow is doo and
right from them to us. Afore we preach at them for playing in the
slumgullion, and gettin' themselves splashed, perhaps we mout ez well
remember that that thar slumgullion comes from our own sluice-boxes,
where we wash our gold. So we'll just put THEM behind us, so," he
continued, with a backward sweep of his powerful hand towards the
chimney, "and goes on. The next thing that crops up ahead of us is
your three years in the hospital, and wot you went through at that
time. I ain't sayin' it wasn't rough on you, and that you didn't have
it about as big as it's made; but ez you'll allow that you'd hev had
that for three years, whether I'd found your mine or whether I hadn't,
I think we can put THAT behind us, too. There's nothin' now left to
prospect but your story of your strike. Well, take your own proofs.
Masters is not here; and if he was, accordin' to your own story, he
knows nothin' of your strike that day, and could only prove you were a
disappointed prospector in a tunnel; your letter--that the person you
wrote to never got--YOU can't produce; and if you did, would be only
your own story without proof! There is not a business man ez would
look at your claim; there isn't a friend of yours that wouldn't believe
you were crazy, and dreamed it all; there isn't a rival of yours ez
wouldn't say ez you'd invented it. Slinn, I'm a business man--I am
your friend--I am your rival--but I don't think you're lyin'--I don't
think you're crazy--and I'm not sure your claim ain't a good one!
"Ef you reckon from that that I'm goin' to hand you over the mine
to-morrow," he went on, after a pause, raising his hand with a
deprecating gesture, "you're mistaken. For your own sake, and the sake
of my wife and children, you've got to prove it more clearly than you
hev; but I promise you that from this night forward I will spare
neither time nor money to help you to do it. I have more than doubled
the amount that you would have had, had you taken the mine the day you
came from the hospital. When you prove to me that your story is
true--and we will find some way to prove it, if it IS true--that amount
will be yours at once, without the need of a word from law or lawyers.
If you want my name to that in black and white, come to the office
to-morrow, and you shall have it."
"And you think I'll take it now?" said the old man passionately. "Do
you think that your charity will bring back my dead wife, the three
years of my lost life, the love and respect of my children? Or do you
think that your own wife and children, who deserted you in your wealth,
will come back to you in your poverty? No! Let the mine stay, with
its curse, where it is--I'll have none of it!"
"Go slow, old man; go slow," said Mulrady, quietly, putting on his
coat. "You will take the mine if it is yours; if it isn't, I'll keep
it. If it is yours, you will give your children a chance to sho what
they can do for you in your sudden prosperity, as I shall give mine a
chance to show how they can stand reverse and disappointment. If my
head is level--and I reckon it is--they'll both pan out all right."
He turned and opened the door. With a quick revulsion of feeling,
Slinn suddenly seized Mulrady's hand between both of his own, and
raised it to his lips. Mulrady smiled, disengaged his hand gently, and
saying soothingly, "Go slow, old man; go slow," closed the door behind
him, and passed out into the clear Christmas dawn.
For the stars, with the exception of one that seemed to sparkle
brightly over the shaft of his former fortunes, were slowly paling. A
burden seemed to have fallen from his square shoulders as he stepped
out sturdily into the morning air. He had already forgotten the lonely
man behind him, for he was thinking only of his wife and daughter. And
at the same moment they were thinking of him; and in their elaborate
villa overlooking the blue Mediterranean at Cannes were discussing, in
the event of Mamie's marriage with Prince Rosso e Negro, the
possibility of Mr. Mulrady's paying two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars, the gambling debts of that unfortunate but deeply
conscientious nobleman.
CHAPTER VI
When Alvin Mulrady reentered his own house, he no longer noticed its
loneliness. Whether the events of the last few hours had driven it
from his mind, or whether his late reflections had repeopled it with
his family under pleasanter auspices, it would be difficult to
determine. Destitute as he was of imagination, and matter-of-fact in
his judgments, he realized his new situation as calmly as he would have
considered any business proposition. While he was decided to act upon
his moral convictions purely, he was prepared to submit the facts of
Slinn's claim to the usual patient and laborious investigation of his
practical mind. It was the least he could do to justify the ready and
almost superstitious assent he had given to Slinn's story.
When he had made a few memoranda at his desk by the growing light, he
again took the key of the attic, and ascended to the loft that held the
tangible memories of his past life. If he was still under the
influence of his reflections, it was with very different sensations
that he now regarded them. Was it possible that these ashes might be
warmed again, and these scattered embers rekindled? His practical sense
said No! whatever his wish might have been. A sudden chill came over
him; he began to realize the terrible change that was probable, more by
the impossibility of his accepting the old order of things than by his
voluntarily abandoning the new. His wife and children would never
submit. They would go away from this place, far away, where no
reminiscence of either former wealth or former poverty could obtrude
itself upon them. Mamie--his Mamie--should never go back to the cabin,
since desecrated by Slinn's daughters, and take their places. No! Why
should she?--because of the half-sick, half-crazy dreams of an old
vindictive man?
He stopped suddenly. In moodily turning over a heap of mining
clothing, blankets, and india-rubber boots, he had come upon an old
pickaxe--the one he had found in the shaft; the one he had carefully
preserved for a year, and then forgotten! Why had he not remembered it
before? He was frightened, not only at this sudden resurrection of the
proof he was seeking, but at his own fateful forgetfulness. Why had he
never thought of this when Slinn was speaking? A sense of shame, as if
he had voluntarily withheld it from the wronged man, swept over him.
He was turning away, when he was again startled.
This time it was by a voice from below--a voice calling him--Slinn's
voice. How had the crippled man got here so soon, and what did he
want? He hurriedly laid aside the pick, which, in his first impulse,
he had taken to the door of the loft with him, and descended the
stairs. The old man was standing at the door of his office awaiting
him.
As Mulrady approached, he trembled violently, and clung to the doorpost
for support.
"I had to come over, Mulrady," he said, in a choked voice; "I could
stand it there no longer. I've come to beg you to forget all that I
have said; to drive all thought of what passed between us last night
out of your head and mine forever! I've come to ask you to swear with
me that neither of us will ever speak of this again forever. It is not
worth the happiness I have had in your friendship for the last
half-year; it is not worth the agony I have suffered in its loss in the
last half-hour."
Mulrady grasped his outstretched hand. "P'raps," he said, gravely,
"there mayn't be any use for another word, if you can answer one now.
Come with me. No matter," he added, as Slinn moved with difficulty; "I
will help you."
He half supported, half lifted the paralyzed man up the three flights
of stairs, and opened the door of the loft. The pick was leaning
against the wall, where he had left it. "Look around, and see if you
recognize anything."
The old man's eyes fell upon the implement in a half-frightened way,
and then lifted themselves interrogatively to Mulrady's face.
"Do you know that pick?"
Slinn raised it in his trembling hands. "I think I do; and yet--"
"Slinn! is it yours?"
"No," he said hurriedly.
"Then what makes you think you know it?"
"It has a short handle like one I've seen."
"And is isn't yours?"
"No. The handle of mine was broken and spliced. I was too poor to buy
a new one."
"Then you say that this pick which I found in my shaft is not yours?"
"Yes."
"Slinn!"
The old man passed his hand across his forehead, looked at Mulrady, and
dropped his eyes. "It is not mine," he said simply.
"That will do," said Mulrady, gravely.
"And you will not speak of this again?" said the old man, timidly.
"I promise you--not until I have some more evidence."
He kept his word, but not before he had extorted from Slinn as full a
description of Masters as his imperfect memory and still more imperfect
knowledge of his former neighbor could furnish. He placed this, with a
large sum of money and the promise of a still larger reward, in the
hands of a trustworthy agent. When this was done he resumed his old
relations with Slinn, with the exception that the domestic letters of
Mrs. Mulrady and Mamie were no longer a subject of comment, and their
bills no longer passed through his private secretary's hands.
Three months passed; the rainy season had ceased, the hillsides around
Mulrady's shaft were bridal-like with flowers; indeed, there were
rumors of an approaching fashionable marriage in the air, and vague
hints in the "Record" that the presence of a distinguished capitalist
might soon be required abroad. The face of that distinguished man did
not, however, reflect the gayety of nature nor the anticipation of
happiness; on the contrary, for the past few weeks, he had appeared
disturbed and anxious, and that rude tranquillity which had
characterized him was wanting. People shook their heads; a few
suggested speculations; all agreed on extravagance.
One morning, after office hours, Slinn, who had been watching the
careworn face of his employer, suddenly rose and limped to his side.
"We promised each other," he said, in a voice trembling with emotion;
"never to allude to our talk of Christmas Eve again unless we had other
proofs of what I told you then. We have none; I don't believe we'll
ever have any more. I don't care if we ever do, and I break that
promise now because I cannot bear to see you unhappy and know that this
is the cause."
Mulrady made a motion of deprecation, but the old man continued--
"You are unhappy, Alvin Mulrady. You are unhappy because you want to
give your daughter a dowry of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
and you will not use the fortune that you think may be mine."
"Who's been talking about a dowry?" asked Mulrady, with an angry flush.
"Don Caesar Alvarado told my daughter."
"Then that is why he has thrown off on me since he returned," said
Mulrady, with sudden small malevolence, "just that he might unload his
gossip because Mamie wouldn't have him. The old woman was right in
warnin' me agin him."
The outburst was so unlike him, and so dwarfed his large though common
nature with its littleness, that it was easy to detect its feminine
origin, although it filled Slinn with vague alarm.
"Never mind him," said the old man, hastily; "what I wanted to say now
is that I abandon everything to you and yours. There are no proofs;
there never will be any more than what we know, than what we have
tested and found wanting. I swear to you that, except to show you that
I have not lied and am not crazy, I would destroy them on their way to
your hands. Keep the money, and spend it as you will. Make your
daughter happy, and, through her, yourself. You have made me happy
through your liberality; don't make me suffer through your privation."
"I tell you what, old man," said Mulrady, rising to his feet, with an
awkward mingling of frankness and shame in his manner and accent, "I
should like to pay that money for Mamie, and let her be a princess, if
it would make her happy. I should like to shut the lantern jaws of
that Don Caesar, who'd be too glad if anything happened to break off
Mamie's match. But I shouldn't touch that capital--unless you'd lend
it to me. If you'll take a note from me, payable if the property ever
becomes yours, I'd thank you. A mortgage on the old house and garden,
and the lands I bought of Don Caesar, outside the mine, will screen
you."
"If that pleases you," said the old man, with a smile, "have your way;
and if I tear up the note, it does not concern you."
It did please the distinguished capitalist of Rough-and-Ready; for the
next few days his face wore a brightened expression, and he seemed to
have recovered his old tranquillity. There was, in fact, a slight
touch of consequence in his manner, the first ostentation he had ever
indulged in, when he was informed one morning at his private office
that Don Caesar Alvarado was in the counting-house, desiring a few
moments' conference. "Tell him to come in," said Mulrady, shortly.
The door opened upon Don Caesar--erect, sallow, and grave. Mulrady had
not seen him since his return from Europe, and even his inexperienced
eyes were struck with the undeniable ease and grace with which the
young Spanish-American had assimilated the style and fashion of an
older civilization. It seemed rather as if he had returned to a
familiar condition than adopted a new one.
"Take a cheer," said Mulrady.
The young man looked at Slinn with quietly persistent significance.
"You can talk all the same," said Mulrady, accepting the significance.
"He's my private secretary."
"It seems that for that reason we might choose another moment for our
conversation," returned Don Caesar, haughtily. "Do I understand you
cannot see me now?"
Mulrady hesitated, he had always revered and recognized a certain
social superiority in Don Ramon Alvarado; somehow his son--a young man
of half his age, and once a possible son-in-law--appeared to claim that
recognition also. He rose, without a word, and preceded Don Caesar
up-stairs into the drawing-room. The alien portrait on the wall seemed
to evidently take sides with Don Caesar, as against the common
intruder, Mulrady.
"I hoped the Senora Mulrady might have saved me this interview," said
the young man, stiffly; "or at least have given you some intimation of
the reason why I seek it. As you just now proposed my talking to you
in the presence of the unfortunate Senor Esslinn himself, it appears
she has not."
"I don't know what you're driving at, or what Mrs. Mulrady's got to do
with Slinn or you," said Mulrady, in angry uneasiness.
"Do I understand," said Don Caesar, sternly, "that Senora Mulrady has
not told you that I entrusted to her an important letter, belonging to
Senor Esslinn, which I had the honor to discover in the wood six months
ago, and which she said she would refer to you?"
"Letter?" echoed Mulrady, slowly; "my wife had a letter of Slinn's?"
Don Caesar regarded the millionaire attentively. "It is as I feared,"
he said, gravely. "You do not know or you would not have remained
silent." He then briefly recounted the story of his finding Slinn's
letter, his exhibition of it to the invalid, its disastrous effect upon
him, and his innocent discovery of the contents. "I believed myself at
that time on the eve of being allied with your family, Senor Mulrady,"
he said, haughtily; "and when I found myself in the possession of a
secret which affected its integrity and good name, I did not choose to
leave it in the helpless hands of its imbecile owner, or his sillier
children, but proposed to trust it to the care of the Senora, that she
and you might deal with it as became your honor and mine. I followed
her to Paris, and gave her the letter there. She affected to laugh at
any pretension of the writer, or any claim he might have on your
bounty; but she kept the letter, and, I fear, destroyed it. You will
understand, Senor Mulrady, that when I found that my attentions were no
longer agreeable to your daughter, I had no longer the right to speak
to you on the subject, nor could I, without misapprehension, force her
to return it. I should have still kept the secret to myself, if I had
not since my return here made the nearer acquaintance of Senor
Esslinn's daughters. I cannot present myself at his house, as a suitor
for the hand of the Senorita Vashti, until I have asked his absolution
for my complicity in the wrong that has been done to him. I cannot, as
a caballero, do that without your permission. It is for that purpose I
am here."
It needed only this last blow to complete the humiliation that whitened
Mulrady's face. But his eye was none the less clear and his voice none
the less steady as he turned to Don Caesar.
"You know perfectly the contents of that letter?"
"I have kept a copy of it."
"Come with me."
He preceded his visitor down the staircase and back into his private
office. Slinn looked up at his employer's face in unrestrained
anxiety. Mulrady sat down at his desk, wrote a few hurried lines, and
rang a bell. A manager appeared from the counting-room.
"Send that to the bank."
He wiped his pen as methodically as if he had not at that moment
countermanded the order to pay his daughter's dowry, and turned quietly
to Slinn.
"Don Caesar Alvarado has found the letter you wrote your wife on the
day you made your strike in the tunnel that is now my shaft. He gave
the letter to Mrs. Mulrady; but he has kept a copy."
Unheeding the frightened gesture of entreaty from Slinn, equally with
the unfeigned astonishment of Don Caesar, who was entirely unprepared
for this revelation of Mulrady's and Slinn's confidences, he continued,
"He has brought the copy with him. I reckon it would be only square
for you to compare it with what you remember of the original."
In obedience to a gesture from Mulrady, Don Caesar mechanically took
from his pocket a folded paper, and handed it to the paralytic. But
Slinn's trembling fingers could scarcely unfold the paper; and as his
eyes fell upon its contents, his convulsive lips could not articulate a
word.
"P'raps I'd better read it for you," said Mulrady, gently. "You kin
follow me and stop me when I go wrong."
He took the paper, and, in dead silence, read as follows:--
"DEAR WIFE,--I've just struck gold in my tunnel, and you must get ready
to come here with the children, at once. It was after six months' hard
work; and I'm so weak I . . . It's a fortune for us all. We should be
rich even if it were only a branch vein dipping west towards the next
tunnel, instead of dipping east, according to my theory--"
"Stop!" said Slinn, in a voice that shook the room.
Mulrady looked up.
"It's wrong, ain't it?" he asked, anxiously; "it should be EAST towards
the next tunnel."
"No! IT'S RIGHT! I am wrong! We're all wrong!"
Slinn had risen to his feet, erect and inspired. "Don't you see," he
almost screamed, with passionate vehemence, "it's MASTERS' ABANDONED
TUNNEL your shaft has struck? Not mine! It was Masters' pick you
found! I know it now!"
"And your own tunnel?" said Mulrady, springing to his feet in
excitement. "And YOUR strike?"
"Is still there!"
The next instant, and before another question could be asked, Slinn had
darted from the room. In the exaltation of that supreme discovery he
regained the full control of his mind and body. Mulrady and Don Caesar,
no less excited, followed him precipitately, and with difficulty kept
up with his feverish speed. Their way lay along the base of the hill
below Mulrady's shaft, and on a line with Masters' abandoned tunnel.
Only once he stopped to snatch a pick from the hand of an astonished
Chinaman at work in a ditch, as he still kept on his way, a quarter of
a mile beyond the shaft. Here he stopped before a jagged hole in the
hillside. Bared to the sky and air, the very openness of its
abandonment, its unpropitious position, and distance from the strike in
Mulrady's shaft had no doubt preserved its integrity from wayfarer or
prospector.
"You can't go in there alone, and without a light," said Mulrady,
laying his hand on the arm of the excited man. "Let me get more help
and proper tools."
"I know every step in the dark as in the daylight," returned Slinn,
struggling. "Let me go, while I have yet strength and reason! Stand
aside!"
He broke from them, and the next moment was swallowed up in the yawning
blackness. They waited with bated breath until, after a seeming
eternity of night and silence, they heard his returning footsteps, and
ran forward to meet him. As he was carrying something clasped to his
breast, they supported him to the opening. But at the same moment the
object of his search and his burden, a misshapen wedge of gold and
quartz, dropped with him, and both fell together with equal immobility
to the ground. He had still strength to turn his fading eyes to the
other millionaire of Rough-and-Ready, who leaned over him.
"You--see," he gasped, brokenly, "I was not--crazy!"
No. He was dead!
End of Project Gutenberg's A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready, by Bret Harte
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